The Webbs of Bell Buckle

The scrawled note was brief: "This will introduce Willy Humphrey. He is ready for the freshman class. (Signed) William R. Webb."

It was good enough for Tennessee's Vanderbilt University. Graduates of any other prep school had to bring along an elaborate collection of grades and records, but not the boys of "Old Sawney" Webb of Bell Buckle, Tenn. (pop. 378). Returning from Versailles, Woodrow Wilson, onetime president of Princeton, told Webb alumnus Norman Davis: "The Webbs defy all the accepted laws of pedagogy, but their boys were the best prepared that we got."

Last week Webb School of Tennessee opened for its 76th year, and 155 Southern boys squirmed on the same hard wooden benches in front of the pot-bellied stove where Old Sawney had called many an earlier class to order. Old Sawney was long since gone, but Webb School, about 50 miles southeast of Nashville, still sticks to Greek and Latin drills and the no-nonsense teaching that made the old man the South's leading prep-school educator for more than 50 years. The headmaster now is Old Sawney's son, William Robert Webb Jr., 72 himself. And one of the newest faculty members is Grandson William Robert Webb III, just back from the wars. About 2,000 miles away, at Claremont, Calif., Sawney's youngest son. jovial, pipe-smoking Thompson Webb, 58, was about to begin another year at the 24-year-old Webb School of California.

Take Him, Trap Him. The Webbs, of both Tennessee and California, still teach by Old Sawney's terrifying "trapping method," a cross between musical chairs and a spelling bee. Seating his boys in order from ace to dunce, Old Sawney fired questions down the line. Anybody who muffed an answer had to trade places with the boy who got it. Feet on the desk, string tie awry, white-bearded Old Sawney hollered encouragement: "Take him on it, trap him, next--next--next!"

Better a Blind Mule. The day school opened, Old Sawney squatted on his heels beneath a beech tree, while new boys paraded past--as many as 75 in 90 minutes. The principal shot a question or two at each one, then tipped off his teachers as to which ones were likely mischiefmakers, and which ones would be poor students. He was usually right.

Study halls were open air whenever the weather permitted. Said Sawney: "I would rather make my living plowing on a steep, rocky hillside with a blind mule than imprison innocent children." Part of a thicket was ruled off for the principal's "office," where malefactors met with a beech switch. When a parent criticized this "barbaric" teaching method, he replied: "I'll continue to use it as long as they keep sending me young barbarians to educate."

Biblical Boarders. Old Sawney introduced the honor system ("Don't do anything on the sly"), prohibited smoking, required attendance at Sunday church and his own Sunday afternoon chapel talks. Old Webb boys remember the talks best. He always began on the minute but stopped only when he had a mind to: sometimes at the end of a single sentence, or once at the end of six hours. Old Sawney soaked his listeners thoroughly in the Bible, boasted he could find a Biblical parallel for any problem. (When a student defied him to mention a boy in the Bible who was packed off to boarding school, Sawney triumphantly produced four--Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.) Once a vocational educator wound up a speech by saying: "I would rather see to it that a boy could milk a cow than be able to read Caesar." Old Sawney, who liked his boys to milk cows and chop wood too, got to his feet, declared: "If I had to make a choice, I would rather my children could do something a calf couldn't beat them at."

The Webb sons, chips off the old block, like to recall the initial investment Old Sawney made for his school: $8,000 for books, $400 for a building to put them in.

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