Free Against the Tide by Noël Browne Page A

stately homes and castles in England or in France; at other times Eileen could afford to pay for a home with
working-class families, where I was a ‘lodger’ or paying guest. I never knew from one holiday to the next where my next home would be. For a time one of Eileen’s friends, Martin
Goughlan from Clare, took me to live where he worked in Whitechapel, near London’s Chinatown. We lived in the workhouse but enjoyed free access to the local cinema and the music halls. My
cosmopolitan experience in St Anthony’s was consolidated in the class sense by the wide variations of social surroundings in which from time to time I found myself. I can say that I was never
tempted to defect from my own class origins by what I saw within the wealthy and privileged houses I visited. My class instincts are deeply rooted.
    Though brief, my years at St Anthony’s were the most enjoyable of all my school life. The school had a cheerful universal tolerance which developed in me a balanced nonpartisan view of the
world. Race, colour or nationality became to me as unimportant as the colour of a boy’s hair or eyes. I had no understanding of the chauvinist, political or religious differences which
separate the peoples of the world. My short spell at St. Anthony’s counteracted the introverted neo-racialism of the Ballinrobe Christian Brothers’ vision of Irishness.
    However, the clearly entertaining but academically useless education which I received had its disadvantages. These were shown clearly when I was given to understand that, were I educationally
suitable, I might qualify for a scholarship to Beaumont College near Windsor. It was found that the educational process, as far as I was concerned, had virtually ceased when I left Ballinrobe and
the Christian Brothers, and there was not much that I had learned there which would be of help to me in being admitted to the intensely chauvinist Jesuit College. Once again I was to be
rescued.
    The wife of M. Talibart was a large pleasant French lady, and she heard of the wonderful possibilities which would open up to me were I to pass the scholarship examination into Beaumont. She
kindly agreed that if I would co-operate and work hard, she would ‘cram’ me with the subjects needed to pass the examination. I was glad to work hard at academic subjects for a change.
I won the scholarship to Beaumont, for which St Anthony’s was one of the recognised preparatory schools.
    Beaumont College was run by the Jesuits, and intended for the education of the small number of middle-and upper-class elite Catholic families who had survived the Reformation and the
confiscation of the great estates in Britain, the Howards, the Throgmortons, the Russells, the Cliffords, the Ponsonbys. Many of these families had been associated throughout English history with
the defence of the values of the Roman Catholic religion. There were also a few boys from wealthy Irish Catholic families.
    Schooldays at Beaumont were very different from St Anthony’s, but happily they shared one important feature which is common to Catholic schools within the British public school system.
There was none of the ugly bullying that is an integral part of the infamous ‘fagging’ system, that is the exploitation of the younger boys of the school in carrying out menial and
often humiliating services for the older boys who subject them to arbitrary, unpredictable and often cruel punishment.
    The long-term hopes of the Jesuits for Beaumont were trenchantly expressed in the reply said to have been sent by the Headmaster of Beaumont to Eton College, situated nearby. The occasion was an
invitation by Beaumont to play football; the Etonian authorities were said to have queried ‘What is Beaumont?’, in response to which Beaumont’s Father Rector stated his vision for
his school. He wrote, ‘Beaumont is what Eton College once was, a Catholic school for the sons of gentlemen’. Whatever the truth of that story, we in fact