Alan posed a difficult problem. It was not in question that he must adapt to public school life. But what public school would cater best for a boy whose principal concern was to do experiments with muddy jam jars in the coal cellar? It was a contradiction in terms. As Mrs Turing saw it, 11
这件事情确实很棘手,艾伦必须得适应公学生活,否则哪个公学会喜欢一个整天用泥巴和果酱做实验的学生?这是一个很严重的矛盾。图灵夫人说:
Though he had been loved and understood in the narrower homely circle of his preparatory school, it was because I foresaw the possible difficulties for the staff and himself at a public school that I was at such pains to find the right one for him, lest if he failed in adaptation to public school life he might become a mere intellectual crank.
在小学时期,艾伦的生活圈子很小,大家能够理解他,并且喜欢他。但是,如果他去了公学,肯定会遇到很多困难。为了给他找个合适的学校,我真的煞费苦心,生怕他不能适应公学的生活,变成一个高智商低情商的怪物。
Her pains were not prolonged. She had a friend called Mrs Gervis, the wife of a science master at Sherborne School, a public school in Dorset. In spring 1926 Alan took the examination again, and was accepted by Sherborne.
但她的苦恼并没持续很久。她有一位朋友,格维斯夫人,是舍尔伯尼公学一位教师的妻子。1926年春天,艾伦再次参加了考试,并进入舍尔伯尼。
Sherborne was one of the original English public schools, whose origins12 lay in the abbey which itself was one of the first sites of English Christianity and in a charter of 1550 establishing the school for local education. In 1869, however, Sherborne had fallen into line as a boarding school on Dr Arnold's model. After a period of low repute, it had revived in 1909 when a Nowell Smith was appointed headmaster. By 1926 Nowell Smith had doubled the roll from two hundred to four hundred, and had established Sherborne as a moderately distinguished public school.
舍尔伯尼是一所历史悠久的英国公学,它最初是个修道院,1550年开始搞教育,到了1869年,彻底变成了学校。1909年,在一阵低迷期过后,诺威尔.史密斯担任了校长,学校由此开始复兴。到了1926年,诺威尔.史密斯已经使学生规模从200人增长到400人,把舍尔伯尼建成了比较卓越的公学。