Old School

The problem begins at one of the headmaster’s teas, when a boy asks Dean Makepeace if he knew Ernest Hemingway during the war. The dean is distracted and later realizes that he had not been clear in his denial. They both drove ambulances in Italy and were injured, but they never met. Weeks later, a boy asks him about Hemingway’s beliefs, and the dean realizes that the boys think that he is friends with Earnest Hemingway. Many similar moments occur over the following years, but not in a way that Dean Makepeace can deny knowing Hemingway. He also realizes he that does not explicitly deny it because of some desire to be important by association. He doesn’t see this as a lie, but instead as “dozing off in his attention to the truth.”

Meanwhile, Dean Makepeace deals with other issues in his life over the years. His wife leaves him and moves to California. He hears from her and loans her money occasionally, and she dies in a car accident in 1953, the year he becomes dean. The headmaster and the dean together try to enact change, ending compulsory religious education and diverting more of the endowment into scholarship funds. The Dean knew that part of his power in his position stems from his perceived relationship with Ernest Hemingway.

The problem becomes more pressing when Hemingway is invited to the school in Spring 1961. Dean Makepeace feels guilty and anxious over the myth of their friendship, particularly because he knows the boys believe he invited Hemingway himself. He watches as they pore over their typewriters. He hates the competitions and how the boys use it as a mark of superiority over each other.

A few days after the narrator’s story is chosen, the headmaster informs Dean Makepeace that the narrator plagiarized the story. The dean says that he can’t personally throw the narrator out—that he has to resign. He explains that he isn’t friends with Ernest Hemingway and has been in violation of the Honor Code for years. The headmaster argues that the dean never expressly said he knew Hemingway, but the dean still insists that he has to resign.

Dean Makepeace stays with his older sister and then takes a few trips to Toronto, Montreal, and New York. He also visits the grave where his wife’s ashes are buried. He regrets quitting his job—he loved the conversations and the boys. Now he hardly feels alive. He applies to other jobs and goes to one interview at St. John’s, but when he refuses to explain why he left the school, he knows that the interview is over. The chairman of the department also gives his condolences over Ernest Hemingway’s death.

Dean Makepeace misses being respected, the tumult in the hallways, and the ability to give guidance and comfort to boys who are homesick and discouraged. The dean writes to the headmaster, apologizing for deserting his post and asking to return. He knows a man has been hired to replace him and understands that he won’t expect to resume his former schedule of classes. The headmaster says he hoped that the dean would decide to come back, and for that reason hired a new teacher for the year only. The dean would teach his usual classes and live in his old apartment, but the headmaster asks that he not return as dean or try to correct the record on Hemingway. Dean Makepeace accepts the offer.

Dean Makepeace returns to the school on the last possible day, on the day the faculty assembles for a pre-term conference at the headmaster’s house. He takes a wrong turn on a route he’s traveled for years, then gets lost while backtracking and arrives nearly an hour late. As he comes into the headmaster’s garden, the teachers all turn to look at him, and the headmaster welcomes him back with open arms. Though the dean is the older man, he feels like a boy and recalls the words, “His father, when he saw him coming, ran to meet him.”