19 JANUARY 2009
NO 1389
Young A.S. Neill (of Summerhill)
Once again Allie (Alexander) was given no choice: while
Neilie was fixed up at Johnson's the chemists, Allie was taken on as an
apprentice draper at Anderson & Sturrock, whose shop was only a few
yards from the house where he had been born fifteen years before. In
more than one sense, he had not come far.
Drapery proved to be scarcely less agonising than clerical work, even
though he was living at home. The hours were from 8 in the morning to 8
at night, extended to 10 on Saturdays; and the work was menial and
undemanding. He had to open up the shop, sweep the floor, and deliver
parcels to customers in and around the town. The work he found hateful – and he was horribly aware that retail trade was an occupation well below
his family's expectations. Yet once again he showed no signs of
rebellion, and was only saved from what might have been years of
drudgery by a lucky chance. Because of his unusually large feet he had
to wear special boots. Being on his feet most of the day, and having a
2-mile walk to and from Kingsmuir every weekday, he found his big-toe
joints becoming inflamed, and then stiff – a condition that remained
with him for life. Painful though this was, it did allow him to give up
the drapery business. It was presumably with the idea of a sedentary job
in mind that his father then agreed to allow him to study yet again,
this time for the civil service proper. Yet, once again, when he sat
down with the dreaded books, he was incapable of putting his mind to
them.
Allie's interests and ambitions lay in a totally different direction. A year before he left school, he had decided that his future lay in being an inventor. Bicycles were still at a very rudimentary stage of development at the time, though they were fast becoming popular and cheap enough to be within the range of working families. Allie was given one of his own, and took to dismantling it to see how he could improve the design. With considerable ingenuity and imagination for a boy of his age, he experimented with a new form of brake; with a homespun method of creating more pedal power; and with a bizarre idea for a bicycle which could be driven by compressed air. All these schemes were shown to be impractical, but they had caught his imagination, brought out an enthusiasm and a persistence which had not been in evidence in the schoolroom, and left him with a life-long curiosity about how mechanical objects worked.
Allie was caught between his innate interest in objects and handwork, and his father's insistence that he should find some job requiring mental application. George Neill was in despair about his son's future. Clearly he had no aptitude for study, which immediately narrowed his choice considerably. Manual or labouring work of any kind would have been a social embarrassment – his brother Neilie's desire to be a shepherd had been hastily put down by his parents. Allie himself was equally gloomy, wondering if he even had the ability to succeed as an ordinary ploughman. It was now that his mother stepped in with an idea that she saw as being of benefit to both father and son. As her husband had more than enough classes to deal with in the school, she suggested he should take Allie on as a pupil teacher. His father replied, apparently without irony, `It's about all he's fit for!'
The remark indicates the low regard in which George Neill held his son. He was at first reluctant to agree to the suggestion, perhaps still entertaining a residue of hope that Allie would find some success in another sphere. But Mary Neill, who seemed to be able to get her way when she really wanted to, must by now have realised that Allie was certainly no candidate for the ministry. Seeing the idea as solving two problems at a stroke, she kept on at her husband, and eventually won the day. And so, on 2 May 1899, Alexander Sutherland Neill, aged 15 years, started work in Kingsmuir Village School, first as a monitor, and then as a pupil teacher. It was, as it turned out, his first step on the road to Summerhill.
JONATHAN CROALL
Croall, J. (1983). Neill of Summerhill. New
York. Pantheon Books. pp. 25-26.