The Master of the Shell

I did find the start of this book to be rather annoying, for it can never have been realistic that a school would advertise for a form-master and house-master. Even in those days it would have been absolutely normal that a house-master would undergo a long period as a junior master before even being asked to take a house at some time in the future. This would be something like five years on the staff, and then a further ten years before actually taking charge of a house. As for being Master of the Shell, again, there would be a period of probation while a young man was learning the ropes about teaching, before he would become head of a Block, such as Shell. In my school there was a Shell, but it was rather a side alley, rather than the broad avenue leading to the Sixth Form. It was usual for the Head of a Block to be a man who had done his fifteen years as a house master, and who had therefore been on the staff for thirty years or more.

One last point about appointing a young master to a school: he would be expected to play a full part in sport or other outdoor activities. Our hero had indeed been an Oxford Blue, and he could have got a job on the basis of this and his academic record. But he would never have been accepted if he mentioned that he was planning soon to marry, for the school needed him heart and soul as a bachelor for at least five years. On the other hand it was quite desirable that he should marry before becoming a house master, though on the whole the most excellent house masters are the unmarried ones.

It takes quite a few chapters to get past the welter of nineteenth century school-boy slang before we get to any decisive fresh action. There was another house-master, who was an exceedingly nasty man. Some of the boys lay a trap for him, catch him, tie him up with a rope, and leave him for the night in the boot box, after which none of the boys will admit to this misdemeanour. By chance the hero, Mr. Railsford, finds out who did it, but under circumstances which make it impossible for him to tell anyone. The nasty man tries to pin the deed on him, and it comes to the point where he has to resign rather than tell.

Luckily he is saved at the very last moment, so late that his cab has arrived to take him to the station. When all is revealed, it is the nasty man that has to resign. We are left to presume that the school continued harmoniously for many a year, with Railsford still a house master, and Master of the Shell.

REED, Talbot Baines (1852-93). English author of books for boys, born in London, the son of Sir Charles Reed (1819-91), chairman of the London School Board. He became head of his father's firm of typefounders, and wrote books on the history of printing (such as History of the Old English Letter-foundries (1887). His robust, moral, but entertaining school stories first appeared in the Boy's Own Paper. They include The Fifth Form at St. Dominic's (1881), The Master of the Shell (1887), and Cockhouse at Fellsgarth (1891).

A PDF of scans and an HTML version of this book are provided. We also provide a plain TEXT version and full instructions for using this to make your own audiobook. To find these click on the PDF, HTML or TXT links on the left.

These transcriptions of books by various nineteenth century authors of instructive books for teenagers, were made during the period 1997 to the present day by Athelstane e-Books. Most of the books are concerned with the sea, but in any case all will give a good idea of life in the nineteenth century, and sometimes earlier than that. This of course includes attitudes prevalent at the time, but frowned upon nowadays.

We used a Hewlett-Packard scanner, a Plustek OpticBook 3600 scanner or a Nikkon Coolpix 5700 camera to scan the pages. We then made a pdf which we used to assist with editing the OCRed text.

To make a text version we used TextBridge Pro 98 or ABBYY Finereader 7 or 8 to produce a first draft of the text, and Athelstane software to find misreads and improve the text. We proof-read the chapters, and then made a CD with the book read aloud by either Fonix ISpeak or TextAloud MP3. The last step enables us to hear and correct most of the errors that may have been missed by the other steps, as well as entertaining us during the work of transcription.

The resulting text can be read either here at the Internet Archive or at www.athelstane.co.uk