The Flower and the Steam-Hammer

'A candidate is expected to write no more than two to three foolscap pages on the following topics. Points will be deducted for errors in spelling and punctuation.' So went Scotland's 1888 Higher English examination, the pinnacle of an education system famed for its rigour and sophistication. One century later it will all be gone – a ruined inheritance for those remaining. But not yet. For now, let us remember; let us go back to the high point of Scottish, and British examination, and the apogee of its manufacturing prowess. Let us return to the pre-war period of examination, the era of the flower and the steam-hammer.

There are two great strands running through the examinations of Britain's twilight years. First, the beauty and elegance of the fine arts. The late-Victorians adored poetry; painting; music; architecture, and, above all, the lightness of early evening air. Walter Pater, famed literary critic, described this aesthetic sensibility in its purest, most distilled form:

The Higher examinations sought to elicit these 'good states of mind' from its candidates. Composition prompts would request short essays on Solitude, Birds, The Sea, and, of course: Flowers – the pleasure they afford at the different seasons of the year; with remarks on their treatment in poetry (1913).

Second, there was the flexing of industrial and imperial prowess. Questions abounded on imperial expansion, economic prosperity, and the 'inventions of the future.' Candidates could be expected to list new technical developments in aerial navigation, or the influence of technologies, like printing or steam, on civilizational progress. No better avatar for this philosophy can be found than Mr Thornton, the main love interest of Gaskell's North and South, as he explains the 'delicate adjustment and might of the steam-hammer':

Behind the new industrial progress, however, was a darker theme: the shadowy, but ever-present spectre of war. Between 1888 and 1913, there were questions on conscription, army reform, patriotism, modern naval combat, and the virtues of warfare. In 1914, albeit written sometime earlier, the exam produced the following question:

One imagines, from this exam, an aged Admiral wandering in the meadows of Scotland, a hazy orange glow from late afternoon, small insects flitting to and fro between the tall grass, as he muses on the changing seasons. Britain is no longer the paramount industrial superpower: America outpaced her in iron and steel production in the 1880s, and now Germany in '93. Even worse, Germany and America seem poised to dominate the new fields of the Second Industrial Revolution, electrical engineering and chemical manufacturing. Britain is being overtaken ruthlessly at the bend.

Weakened, Britain has been forced out of her policy of "Splendid Isolation" into a new series of treaties with Russia, France, and Japan. Our Admiral, born in 1850, and coming of age in the '70s and '80s, has little experience with peer competitors or national friendships. Nor, for that matter, is he familiar with the scale of industrial warfare. A new 'big gun' battleship, The Dreadnought, has just been launched in Portsmouth and is rapidly becoming the metric of national strength. In 1908, Britain had 3 and Germany 0; in 1909, Britain: 7, Germany: 4; and in 1911, Britain 11, Germany 7. The race is on, for:

The wind picks up and the trees rustle in the distance, dandelion seeds blowing out over the wide expanse of Scottish coast. The Admiral sighs, falling into a cast iron bench overlooking the sea. He wonders what the vast industrial production of raw material, the endless parade of new inventions, is for. It is all moving so fast: even here, amongst the wildflowers, he hears echoes from the vast explosions down south, of 'Motor-roads', 'Suburbs', 'Escalators', and 'Underground Trams'; of 'Socialism', 'Eugenics', and 'World Government', of currencies measured in Energy rather than Silver, and wars fought with aerial bombardment and chemicals rather than mounted cavalry charges. Wells or Kipling? Forward or back? Unable to make sense of his world, our admiral is reduced to abstract formulae:

He longs for a simpler time. A time where the qualities of a good orator (1888) and the nature and kinds of courage (1894) counted for something. His children, 15 and 17, are sitting their Higher examinations in Scotland and have been mastering Latin and Greek, a wide range of English literature, and further mathematics. Their world still makes sense, for it is the intimate and personal one of the school curricula. The examinations might ask his sons for their 'favourite holiday occupation', the 'place in which you live', any 'great picture you have seen', or 'your experience during the late severe frost' (1895). The examiners wished to see the same picture they saw from different eyes:

It was a world more connected than our own, where an Admiral's son might be expected to understand 'the routine of life on a large farm; or on board a ship; or in any great industry with which you are familiar'; or the yearly routine in the life of a shepherd; or a Gamekeeper; or a Deep-sea fisherman; or a Lowland farmer. Knowledge was still united with experience, and academic subject with academic subject. The sons might learn Latin and Greek on Monday, apply this knowledge to derive etymologies in English on Tuesday, elegantly express a mathematical proof on Wednesday, and, on Thursday, describe snowstorms in Geography or the dialogues between the Great People of History. Then, perhaps come Friday, his sons might use English, Geography, and History together to tackle a single question:

It was possible, in the shade of yesterday, to contain the world within the four corners of a watercolour painting. But today will soon arrive, and the old intimacies of Victoria will be spun apart by industrial acceleration. Already in the '80s and '90s you can hear whispers behind the formal text of the examination. Why bother learning Latin and Greek, when chemistry, physics, and biology are the keys to the future? Don't you see what the Germans are doing? And in reply, give power to the engineer, biologist, and technician: can we trust these men? A whole new world of work, with new classes and philosophies, is emerging: liberal, professional, technical: what effect does one's education have on character? The strange was becoming natural, and the assumed a matter of justification:

These are the first hints of a great storm brewing at sea, ready to break upon the British coast in the 1920s '30s. A decade later, the literary critic I.A. Richards will agonise over whether the sciences and humanities can be reconciled, and Alfred Whitehead will question the nature of knowledge in an era in which no student can hope to master the whole literary canon, or even a mere fraction thereof. There will be calls for technical education and a curriculum which is fluid matching the 'kinetic' nature of modern society. 'Dead facts' will be culled ruthlessly as science invalidates and corrects. The place for our beautiful watercolour is unclear: how will our Admiral make sense of the bizarre, fragmented poem-experiments of the 1930s?

In 1910 these storms are still only dark tones between the orange haze of our coastal evening. For now, Romanticism holds sway and the world remains unified. The Admiral's bench overlooks a ridge of sand dunes, and, beyond them, the thunder and crash of the North Sea can be heard. Directly ahead, interrupting the horizon, is a grand island, a 'volcanic plug', upon which lies a ruined prison. Our Admiral is quietly drawn into a passage he read some time ago:

Despite the direness of the national situation, the Edwardian elite still had a taste for the mysterious, the macabre, the delightful, and surprising. The next generation of rulers might be asked to give a personal narrative of a haunted house, or an account of some 'famous ruin – palace, castle, cathedral, the candidate had seen,' including speculations on its long-lost inhabitants. And why not? The admiral smiles, looking forward to hearing his 15 year old son's various stories this evening. Tales of Queen Victoria and Elizabeth having afternoon tea (1910); the Scot and Englishman discussing the union of crown (1907); the unexpected visits from his son's favourite authors:

The Admiral relaxes, safe again from the troubling thoughts of synthetic dye, balance of trade calculations, and yearly industrial catastrophes. But what is that? Again…? The sound in the distance of those same explosions. Boom. Boom. Boom! 1909 turns to 1911, and then 1913, and at last, 1914. Examinations continue in 1915 and 1916, but by 1917 things have got so bad the Higher is cancelled across Scotland. How many sons born in 1900 were still alive when it came time for their literature exam? How many teachers were left to lecture from the daises? When national examinations eventually resume, and we enter the interwar era, the questions take on a different, more jaded tone: