Free Homage to Gaia by James Lovelock

wealth. It had trickled down from Victorian times when the aristocracy had been offended by the wealth and success of entrepreneurs. It is easy to forget how, in the 19 th and early 20 th centuries, their antecedents judged people. Breeding alone was thought to bring forth the good qualities. It was widely held that no newly rich person could ever be a gentleman or a gentlewoman and what the aristocracy thought yesterday the bourgeoisie thinks today. The collective contumely of the petty bourgeoiswas for its victims little different from racial hatred. What is odd is that the intellectual middle class, whose members would be deeply distressed to be called racist, still stigmatizes ‘Trade’ as if those connected with commercial activity were of a different race.
    One day in December 1931, my school announced that boys could sit for the Supplementary Junior County Scholarship. I realized that this would relieve the burden of school fees from my mother and father and I asked the schoolmaster who made the announcement how I should apply. He laughed and said, ‘Don’t waste your time, you haven’t an earthly chance.’ Even so, I went to the school secretary, Miss Borer, a plump and friendly woman who had a spacious office at the front of the school, and she readily gave me a form and helped me complete it in her office. I went home and soon forgot all about it and never mentioned it, but in February 1933 a letter arrived summoning me to another school in Streatham to sit the examination itself. I was incubating pneumonia at the time and was feverish; perhaps because of this I could think more quickly. Anyway, the exam was not difficult. One requirement was an essay. There was a choice of subjects and one of these was ‘Iron and Steel’. I had recently read a book from the Brixton Library about the steel industry, mostly technical, and had found it fascinating. I had a good memory and was able to write at length about iron smelting, Bessemer converters, and the production of the various alloy steels. I knew little in real terms about these metals but phrases like molybdenum steel, or chrome vanadium steel, all were filed away in my mind, along with their remarkable properties. I staggered home from the examination and was ill for six weeks. There were no antibiotics then, and infections just had to take their course. They sent me to the Saunders family at Coldharbour near Dorking to convalesce, and it was here that the good news of my award of the scholarship came. I feel sure it was the essay that did it, and I remember Miss Saunders coming to my bedroom early one spring morning with the good news that astounded as well as pleased me: just for once, something right had happened.
    The school, like many today, had little trust in tests or examinations , and preferred teachers’ assessments of a pupil’s abilities. They ignored my scholarship success and punished me for my cheek by making me repeat the previous year’s work, and in the lowest stream. The seventy-five boys of each year were divided into three streams: Upper, A, and B. Lovelock, the freak, was placed in the B stream. My life might have been a dismal one if, like today, my future haddepended on teachers’ assessments alone. Examinations taken anonymously gave me my chance.
    There were a few wonderful teachers like Ginger Warren, a bearded man with ginger hair, who looked like George Bernard Shaw, and was stern. He was strong, just, and taught so well that in one term under his tuition I learnt more French than in three years under the flabby, sadistic Froggy Adair. There was also Harold Toms, the chemistry teacher, and the only one at the school with a PhD. His lessons were my refuge. He taught so well that the Strand School excelled itself in Firsts in the external examinations in chemistry. The masters at the Strand School included too many incompetents and these misguided men tried hard to diminish me. A favourite trick was to make me stand before the