H.E. Bates Companion

A portrait of a teacher at a boys school, resented by his colleagues for not making way for a younger man: "he felt old, empty, devoid of desire and purpose...a nervous, irascible, obese little figure teaching Latin in an obsolete way to boys who would never understand." The story is based in part on Bates's Latin teacher Mr. Gaul, who is described as "extremely fat" and whose voice "grew shriller as he grew more angry...It took him weeks to make us see what we ought to have seen in a few hours" (Grammar School, Kettering) 26). In The New Adelphi (London, September-November 1929, iii:1, pp. 55-7).