October 1, 1910
I havejoined theTimesBook Club. I find that I cannot get along without a constant supply of new books. I want to keep abreast of modern thought at all costs. I don't see why, because I am condemned to teach Descartes and Pythagoras, I should deny myself Henry James or Bourget. I find that standard works are not enough. There are times when Pope palls on me, when Dickens and Thackeray ask to be given a rest. At such times I want to read some of the new school, the men who have broken away from the old traditions and carved out a new world. Perhaps if I were not in such a deadly fear of getting into a groove I should not pin my faith so largely to these very restless and rather morbid young men, but a schoolmaster seems to be expected to stifle any growth that a nation might be showing signs of, to prevent youth from essaying out of the beaten tracks into the many virgin jungles that surround life.
This term so far is going fairly smoothly. We have a new German master who gets unmercifully "ragged"; O'Connor looks upon him with extreme suspicion. He thinks that the German Government have sent him here purposely to spy out this part of the country. A more harmless fellow than Koenigit would be hard to find. O'Connor really is a prodigious ass. In the first place the man is very nervous: he has no idea of keeping order. Boys have a habit of entering his classroom by the window; they also burn bonfires in his waste-paper basket; they bring mice into form and chase them all over the room; they cheer when any boy gets good marks and hiss when any one fails to score. Altogether his sets derive a considerable amount of amusement from him and we in Common Room profess to be shocked but are in reality secretly pleased to think how infinitely superior we are to him. Nothing gives a man self-confidence so quickly as to see another one making a havoc of his job.
Benson is also getting "ragged," not so much by the boys as by some of the younger members of the staff. Last term we started a club which meets nightly in his rooms and "rouses the welkin with a succession of catches." We drink whisky and consume vast quantities of fruit and cake, while he plays to us on the piano or violin and we shout snatches from the latest musical comedy.
Benson's forte lies in the subject of boys' smoking. He is certain that boys use the music-rooms to smoke in. To encourage him in this idea, several of us have lately dropped cigarette ends in different parts of the building; these he discovers, picks up and treasures, revealing them to us later. He has a wonderful scheme (which he thinks is his own but which in reality we have put him up to) by which he means to catch the miscreants red-handed.
Half of the club are to sit in darkness and silence in one room, the other half in another: we are all to listen until we hear the boys come in, and at a givensignal dash out upon them from two directions and so catch them.
Jackson and I have been deputed by the others to dress up and do the smoking; we are to get out of the window after smoking two or three cheap cigarettes one night and then be chased up and down the shore. That is, Benson will do the chasing, the others will slip back in the dark to consume whisky and wait for his return. He will then be told and the sight of his face ought to be good to see.
October 24, 1910
We have brought off the rag: it didn't turn out as we expected. Both Jackson and I elaborated the jest. I was produced in a (pretended) faint, covered with mud and bleeding at the nose, after a supposed fight with one of the boys, who "in the end got away by pushing me into a pond." I put so much realism into this that Benson was quite concerned about me. I felt an awful pig and so seriously did Benson take it that we did not feel that we could let him know the truth of the matter.
I have been restless again of late and to cure myself have taken to going into Scarborough and roaming round the streets at night. I find this an excellent remedy. I love watching crowds, especially a seaside crowd. They are so obviously out to enjoy life once work for the day is over. They are hail-fellow-well-met with everybody. I don't know why I get so fascinated with the life of the streets: no one else at Radchester ever thinks of any other strata of society than his own.
I want to probe the drama of life: each lighted window conjures up some vision of domestic comedyor tragedy to me. I want to know. I want to play eavesdropper to whisperers in the dark: I scent romance at every corner of the street. Partly I attribute this to reading O. Henry's short stories. "We livebyhabits, butforadventure" would seem to be the foundation of his belief about life. The skirts of Romance are always swishing past us; we just hear faintly the sound of her tread, we see dimly the sheen of her garments, but we are so bolstered up and surrounded by convention that we dare not give chase, much as we should like to. So Romance for us, as O. Henry says, comes to mean a mere matter of a marriage or two, a few old letters, and a ball programme stuffed away in a drawer—the memory of one scent-laden evening, and for the rest, our existence consists of a lifelong feud with a steam radiator.
I find that my boys love these American short stories, with their quaint extravagances of language, their three-fold surprise upon surprise, their outspokenness and world-wide sympathies with every sort of man and woman, from train-robber to shop-girl and man about town to murderer and convict.
I have been reading lately Edmund Holmes's book on "What Is and What Might Be." He seems to express the ideals of education better than any one I have ever read: yet no one on the staff does more than sneer or laugh at him as an idealist and an impracticable dreamer. I like particularly his six instinctive desires of youth. Every child, he says, wants passionately (1) to talk and listen, (2) to act (in the dramatic sense), (3) to draw, paint, and model, (4) to dance and sing, (5) to know the why of things, and (6) to construct things. To develop all thesesix instincts he declares is the true aim of all real education.
How little do we care how well or badly a boy talks, reads, acts, sings, reasons or constructs. If we were to model ourselves on a right system we should pay as much attention to the development of a boy's æsthetic as to his physical side.
As it is we distrust music, painting, acting and reading as effeminate and degrading. We look on the cult of the beautiful as in some degree immoral: O'Connor's theory of Spartan ugliness, of working always in a room as bare as a barracks, unrelieved by colours or comfortable surroundings, is looked on as the ideal method of training youth. Subjects are taught just in so far as they are distasteful: the fact that one can work hard at anything just because it is interesting is regarded as impossible. If one begins to argue you are countered by the shibboleth of "mental discipline," which is supposed to be the final word on any topic of controversy. If grammar grind provides a mental discipline, grammar grind must therefore be invaluable, quite apart from its utilitarian aspect. Consequently boys are taught many things which serve no useful purpose and lead nowhere simply because it is good for them to have to perform arduous, pointless tasks without asking the "why" of them, in direct contravention of Mr. Holmes's theory. The fact that beautiful natural surroundings connote that the mind also assimilates a beauty of demeanour is entirely lost sight of, or flatly contradicted. I should like to impose upon our leading educationists of the old regime one task which they would find distasteful—a very severe "mental discipline" and hence very good for them—I mean acompulsory reading of Mr. Holmes's book: it would do them a world of good.
I find that my greatest joy in life these days is having boys to tea. However much one may mix with them in games, in hall, in form, in debating societies and elsewhere, one somehow misses the personal relationship, whereas at these tea-parties boys are altogether natural and throw off the protective mask they usually wear before masters.
I like to see them pottering about the room, picking books from the shelves, looking at photographs in albums, arguing frenziedly among themselves quite regardless of me, with unrestrained freedom of diction.
Some of the younger ones of course simply regard my rooms as a refuge, a place where it is possible to keep warm in front of a fire, instead of having to sit on the hot-water pipes in the passages, a tuck-shop where one doesn't have to pay and where "bloods" don't come and turn you out of the good seats.
But several who come solely for food stay frequently to talk and unburden themselves of their troubles. It is then that I begin to think that after all there may be some chance of my doing good work as a schoolmaster. I cannot rid myself of the feeling that most of my time here is wasted. I cannot pretend that my mathematical teaching is really successful. Apparently good mathematical tutors are extremely rare: all through the school the standard here is lamentable. We keep on trying new methods and new textbooks, but with very little result. We can secure a dozen good classical scholarships at the University every year, whereas one mathematical exhibition every three years is considered extremely good. Mathematics, like English, is better taughtat the grammar and secondary schools than at the Public Schools. I suppose they get more capable teachers at schools which are directly responsible to the Board of Education. I cannot believe that the material they work with is better. Of course, one reason why the secondary schools score so heavily in science and mathematical scholarships is because boys educated at these places know that they will have to depend entirely upon their own efforts to secure a living, whereas the Public School boy usually knows that if he fails entirely to make good there still remains some sinecure or other which he will be able to obtain through his family's influence. This and the fact that he will be rich anyhow combine to make him careless about taking every advantage of improving his mind while he is at school. To do any work which isn't definitely required is to call down upon a boy's head from his friends insult and abuse. The principle of "work for work's sake" is unknown to them: incentives of all sorts have to be provided, the honour of the House, the sporting tendencies of the master who takes them, the possibility of a prize, the fear of punishment, any and every device is employed except the right one.
December 21, 1910
I have had my fill of refereeing in House matches this term. Nothing is so calculated to bring one into bad odour with a House or with other members of Common Room. I only do it because they never can get any one else. One strives to be scrupulously fair, and the result is that the whole game devolves into a series of whistles and free kicks. The excitement of playing in a House match causes quite themajority of boys to forget that they are merely playing a game: they try to do everything in their power to secure the advantage, however alien to the spirit of the game. They are told before they go on to the field that unless they lose their tempers and fight from the very beginning they will not do themselves justice, which in itself is counsel of a most doubtful kind; they certainly act up to instructions. Every decision the referee gives is construed as a direct piece of favouritism, and conversation and argument run high on a doubtful try for weeks after the event.
Another thing that I have come up against this term is the dignity of the prefects.
As one grows older one forgets the awe in which these mighty men are held by the school, mighty, that is, if they have been elected for their physical prowess: they are of no account if they are prefects merely because of their intellectual attainments. I have been trying quietly to counteract this state of things by being peculiarly courteous and dignified in my treatment of the scholars and rather hail-fellow-well-met with the "games bloods." They are certainly obtuse, but they quite quickly saw through this. Of course a "games blood" takes infinitely higher rank than any assistant master under thirty, in fact than all of us except the House-masters: he resents being patronized by such an upstart, for instance, as myself. Consequently, by my action in this matter I have let myself in for a feud which may last for years. I have deeply offended the real rulers of the school.
It came about owing to the fact that I have several prefects (elected solely for their "beefiness")in my low mathematical sets. They never do any work and altogether set a rotten example to the others. Of late I have been punishing these boys very heavily, to the great astonishment of themselves and no little enjoyment of the other boys. One of these giants complained to Hallows, his House-master, who came to me in a towering rage and told me that I was subverting the whole of the Public School tradition, lowering the dignity of the prefects and—Heaven knows what besides.
"How the blazes are these fellows going to keep order when the rest of the school see that a young new master can defy them at will and set them punishments which degrade them in the sight of their own fags?"
"Wouldn't it be a good idea," I replied, "if prefects were not elected until they had risen high enough in the school not to have 'fags' in their forms? After all, one of the reasons for coming to school is to work, though we seem to do our best to gloss over that inconvenient fact."
I have had a series of visits lately from Stapleton, who was at Oxford with me: he has been appointed curate at Todsdale, an enormous mining town, and the life there is nearly killing him. The eternal squalor and dreariness of the life, the pettiness of the routine at the Clergy House, the lack of any intellectual or æsthetic interests all bid fair to send him out of his mind.
He usually comes over on a motor-bicycle on Thursday afternoons, and pours out all his troubles as we walk up and down the seashore: he reads to me his sermons, he gives me graphic accounts of the quarrels about ceremonial and duty that occur daily overmeals in the Clergy House, of some of the hovels he has to visit, of his opponents among the laity and so on. He seems to be getting mixed up with some mill-girl in a way I can't quite understand: it sounds as if her people were trying their hardest to secure him as a husband for their daughter: perhaps they know that he has considerable private means, for the average curate is not much of a catch in the eyes of the north-country factory worker: he has no prospects.
I must say I admire Stapleton's courage and devotion to duty in cutting himself off from the beauties of the south, from all decent society, and all chance of meeting a girl of his own status: it must be a terrible life for him, for his senses are not blunted. He sits and mopes, thinking over old days when he too lived in Arcadia.
I don't think that I could ever settle down in the north. I like the bustle and the sense of importance that possesses the money-makers in Leeds, but I object to the absence of sun, of the sleepy happiness of the south; the crude dialect, rasping and hard, seems typical of the people here. They seem to have no time to devote to anything which does not actually increase their income, they pride themselves on their parsimony and yet they are strangely inconsistent.
I have just got back from a House supper, a quaint terminal affair held by the House which wins the Senior Athletic Cup for the term: how different these tame, nervous affairs are from the full-blooded, riotous orgies of Oxford days. It appears that it is necessary to get a man drunk before you can really put him at his ease at a big gathering. The much-watered claret-cup which passes for strong drink atthese school-shows is pitiable enough, but it is typical of the spirit of the whole thing. Most of the principals concerned are in a state of pitiable terror because of the speeches which they are expected to make at the conclusion of the feast. Conversation is tedious and conducted in undertones; there are frequent dead silences; House-masters work unflaggingly to put people at their ease, but every one feels conscious of his clothes and his neighbour's criticisms. We are all afraid of saying the wrong thing or of omitting to praise some one who coached the team or played well: every time some name is left out which ought to have been included, some one asked to sing who breaks down, some one to speak who only succeeds in stammering out platitudes.
And yet if there ever was a man calculated to put people at their ease, it is the House-master in whose house I live. Heatherington is one of the finest men I have ever met: he represents the high-water mark in schoolmasters.
He is an excellent scholar, bred in the best traditions of Eton and Christ Church, of good family, hard as nails physically, a double Blue, a prominent mountaineer, a born humorist, well-to-do, whose one great aim in life is to make and keep his House famous for sportsmen, scholars and gentlemen. He knows his boys through and through and makes friends with all of them: every one in the place is devoted to him. He belongs to no clique in the Common Room, but preserves the best traditions of the Englishman in his own life and in that of his boys. Yet even he cannot attain the unattainable: he cannot make a House supper "go." The only people who enjoy themselves to the full are the fags: they have noresponsibility, they simply eat and drink and applaud. For the rest of us it is one long agony.
Christmas, 1910
As usual I have come home for Christmas: as usual I miss Radchester and my boys more than I can say. There is nothing to do here except visit the villagers, go for walks with my mother, and write letters.
I like the villagers best at our Christmas dances. They are more natural then, and sing and talk and play games and dance with utter abandon: they no longer suspect one of ulterior, hidden motives. They extend the right hand of fellowship and we all give ourselves up to whole-hearted enjoyment. They are all, young and old, content to be as children, innocent and friendly, actuated by no other motive than the giving and taking of pleasure. Would that they were always like this.
I have been getting up debates in the village institute this Christmas, and I have been surprised at the high level of intelligence displayed and the sincerity of the oratory of the few who speak. They were diffident at first, but soon warmed up as they got interested and we have always roused considerable warmth of feeling before we have finished the evening's entertainment.
What does distress me about village life is the education. I am almost certain that no education at all would be better than the present half-and-half system. To take away a boy or girl from school at thirteen or fourteen is criminal: children at that age have just been trained to want to know—and they are then taken away and the labour of years allundone by being pushed into mills, on to farms, or behind counters, where nothing but mechanical obedience and servility are required. They forget to read, they forget how to write, they have no interest in the things of the mind. It amazes me that they grow up at all with anything but animal instincts. Education in England, so far as the majority of the children go, is useless and will continue to be so until it is made compulsory that no boy or girl shall leave school before the age of sixteen or seventeen. You can't do much with mindless louts of eighteen with one hour's Bible lesson a week. If any one disbelieves this, let him try to coach a dozen villagers in amateur theatricals: I've tried it and I know. They are simply blocks of wood once you put them on a platform. The average Public School boy of fifteen is quite at home on the stage: your yokel of any age is simply stiff and lifeless, unable to be anybody but himself, charcoal his face never so deeply.
January 15, 1911
I have had a gay fortnight in the Potteries, staying with the Pasleys. Young Pasley is in Heatherington's house and in my form; his father is a tile manufacturer and fabulously wealthy. I found the whole family lovable. They live in a large house in the middle of grimy Hanley. They are real sons of the soil and proud of it. The father and mother speak broad Staffordshire, the three girls and the two boys as the result of Public School education are ultra-refined and are inclined to bully their parents, who, however, hold the whip-hand. They have high tea instead of dinner; they sit down soberly in theevening to hear Adela (who is fresh home from Dresden and is engaged to the local curate) play the violin. At ten Mrs. Pasley rises with, "Well, lads, it's time for bye-bye: I'll be sayin' good neet to you, Mester."
They delight in showing me over the warehouses. They love every inch of their hideous streets and proudly point out the excellence of their schools, their public baths, their shops and theatres; every one knows every one else. They almost bow the knee at the name of Wedgwood, they unaffectedly despise London. They know that the hub of the universe is to be found in the Five Towns. The exact income of every visitor to the house is known and talked about almost to the exclusion of every other topic. They read nothing at all; they genially regard me as a fool for wasting my brains at "school-teaching," as they call it, but they are genial and hospitable. Looking back on it, my visit seems to have been a long succession of feeding fowls, dancing, shopping, and looking at priceless china in the making.
I had one or two long talks with father Pasley on the subject of Public School education: he is not quite certain that he is getting his money's worth at Radchester.
"That lad of mine is not squeezing all he might out of yon school: I don't like throwing a hundred and twenty quid a year into the sea. You've got antique methods of learning a lad mathematics at your place, Mester, and I don't hold with ignorance; classics and such fal-lals is all right for parsons and the likes of you, but my lad's not going to be a parson nor a school-teacher neether: he's going into t' business and he knows it: he's going to have to earnhis brass, same as I did mine. I don't believe in a lad being brought up soft with the notion as 'ow he's going to have a mint o' money at his fingers' ends to play the fool with. Pasley and Son's a firm as wants men as 'ev got some grit to 'em: I sends my boy to school to get grit—learn 'im that, Mester, and let the rest go."
March 3, 1911
TheseEaster terms, short as they are, are a big strain on the nervous system: no sooner do we get back to work than some luckless youth spreads measles, chicken-pox, scarlet fever or some other malady through the school, and we have to teach depleted forms, drill depleted companies and play House games with half our side away. I find that my favourite illness is influenza. I usually manage to keep a sort of running cold all through the winter months, which develops periodically into that vile sickness; it is then that I get pessimistic. I feel intolerably lonely and uncomfortable, and sigh for the sunny south and warmth and cosy fires and more humane companionship. The doctor here is a dear, but rather rough and ready in his methods. He hasn't the time to waste his hours on individual cases, neither is he exactly an expert. It is dreadful to lie in bed and hear the tramp of feet down the cloisters, the bells ringing for chapel, hall and school and not be in it.
One is forgotten almost at once by every one. People simply haven't the time to sit at a bedside even if they wanted to, and I long for conversation and a cheery laugh on these occasions. School is all right so long as one keeps fit, but once fall out of therace and it is a veritable hell. My last bout of "flu" has left my nerves in a thoroughly disordered condition: I feel almost suicidal at times. I get very restless. I long to create in writing: of late I have been trying, without any great success, in all sorts of directions, verse, short stories, plays, articles—even a novel. Everything I submit to publishers comes back after I have endured agonies of anticipation in waiting. Something is wrong. Yet I feel convinced that I have it in me to write. I can only let myself go in this diary: here I don't have to think of publishers or editors. I write just to please myself. That is what so delights me in reading Pepys. He just rattles on with no thought of an audience, absolutely unselfconscious. I look on this diary as a secret companion to whom I can confide all my troubles and joys: my hatred of Hallows, my love for the boys, my theories on education, the good days of the holidays, books I have read—anything and everything that interests me.
I am quietly amassing a library. I only wish that I could rely on borrowers to return the books I lend them. It is not the slightest good my going into form and advising boys to read Lamb and Browning and Dickens and Thackeray unless I can provide the books for them. The House libraries are under-equipped, the school library is only accessible to the Sixth Form. But boys have no consciences in the matter of returning books: they prefer to cut the fly-leaf out and substitute their own names in some cases! Still my job is to instil a love for the old and new masters of literature by whatever means, and to do this I suppose I must not grudge an impoverished library.
One thing that annoys me is the fact that I cannot share all my treasures with the boys. Most modern writing is too strong wine for adolescents. I wish Common Room did not also imagine that it is too strong meat for their innocent minds. It seems to me that the man who refuses to try to keep abreast of all the modern thought has no right to be a schoolmaster at all. What in the world is the use of living solely on a diet of theTimesand theSpectator? I advocated theNew Statesmanfor the reading-room and was promptly howled down. Apparently the idea that a man can look on both sides of a question is looked on here as preposterous. What theSpectatorsays is looked upon as a final judgment in all things. The middle articles of that quite estimable paper are read aloud as examples of perfect modern English style to boys in the top forms, and they are incited to ape it assiduously.
Occasionally, on Sunday mornings, a progressive young master will read a little "In Memoriam" or "A Death in the Desert" to his form as a variant to ordinary Divinity, but he does so tremblingly lest authority should hear of it and rebuke him.
One of our men preaching last Sunday even ventured to read an extract from "Romola," in the pulpit, but apologized profoundly for so doing and damned poor George Eliot with faint praise by saying, "She was not a bad woman."
There have been a number of feuds in Common Room lately which have reminded me of the umbrella episode in "Mr. Perrin and Mr. Traill."
Young Rowntree who joined us this term has a brother in the army who happens to be stationed close by: he had him over to dinner one night lastweek and brought in some "fizz" to liven things up a bit. He sits, of course, at the bottom of the junior table, not very far from me. Not wishing to appear niggardly to the rest of us he brought in three bottles in order to pass them round to those who sat near him. We had a quite riotous orgie and for the first time since I have been at Radchester the junior table quite drowned the senior both in laughter and conversation.
It really was funny to watch the white drawn faces of the water drinkers of the top table, with the one syphon of seltzer as relief, while we, upstarts of a new age, were regaling ourselves with Pommery. There was a fearful row about it afterwards. Rowntree was written to by half the staff (who had not tasted the champagne) about the etiquette with regard to visitors. It was only by courtesy of the senior members that junior masters were allowed to invite visitors at all: it was taken for granted that if such a privilege were extended juniors would not abuse it by drinking anything but water. There was a battle royal. Rowntree is young enough not to give in without a struggle: during the last week he has taken in a bottle of some sort to dinner every night. He is the kind of man who won't be kept longer than a term. He "rags" his form and incites them to "rag" him and everybody else. He refuses to take Radchester seriously: he walks across the prefect's lawn (an unpardonable offence for a master), he walks about arm-in-arm with the boys in his form if he likes them; he swears quite openly and fluently in Common Room, he takes away the papers so that he can read them comfortably in his own room and forgets to return them, he even smokes cigars in the masters' reading-room. The old men can do nothingwith him: he is impervious to black looks and misunderstands rebukes. He cuts every other chapel and usually forgets to take "prep." or "roll." On "halves" he always goes away, sometimes as far afield as Leeds or York on his motor-bicycle, and does not arrive home till two or three the next morning. He wears bright ties, silk socks, soft collars, and very well-fitting light clothes, totally regardless of the convention which demands black from boy and master alike. He is a very disturbing factor in Common Room and every one is moving Heaven and Earth to have him "sacked." What worries me about him is his ability: he writes with considerable success. He confessed to me one day that he only meant to stay one term: "I want copy for a novel I have in my mind—these old fossils with their moth-eaten, stereotyped conservatism give me a grand field. I guess this is just the best Public School in the country for my purpose, but my hat, I shouldn't care to have to stick at it for a year. It's funny to think that you all were alive once as undergraduates."
He read a chapter or two of his book to me the other day: he's got the spirit of the place exactly. I wish I had his gift. He sees everything and has the power of sifting his evidence with wonderful accuracy: he misses nothing.
Since he came I have given up my Sunday walks with Renton, who talks of nothing but dyspepsia and his own powers of teaching, and have accompanied Rowntree on some of his excursions on his motor-bicycle. We lunch in Scarborough and get into conversation with week-enders. Rowntree looks on all humanity as "copy," and is without any sense of modesty. He picks up loungers in hotel bars, girlsbehind counters, girls on the pier, tramps, hotel porters, "nuts" in the hotel lounge and all sorts of unexpected people. He always gets some fantastic story out of them: he is as good a story-teller as George Borrow and just as great a liar. His imagination combined with his experience make him a rare raconteur. He doesn't buy many books, but he is not averse from borrowing mine. I only regret that I can never get them back; he is quite shameless in the matter of purloining literature: he takes books out of the school library without "entering them" and soon begins to think that they really belong to him. He reminds me a good deal of a boy called Senhouse who is also unable to bow the knee in the house of Rimmon; he conforms to none of the school regulations and how he has escaped expulsion up to now beats me. At present he is raising for himself untold trouble by making friends with a small boy called Gillman in Hallows' house. He is desperately fond of this child, and waxes quite sentimental over him to me. There is no harm in either of them, and they are as open as the day in their relations with one another: they wait for each other after chapel, hall, and school. They go for long walks together, they contrive to sit together at school lectures and in prep. Hallows and Heatherington have each lectured both of them, and Hallows has caned Gillman frequently, but they refuse to give up the friendship.... Common Room is as usual in a frenzy over it and I have been reported to the Head Master for aiding and abetting them in their scandalous defiance of rules by having them to tea together in my rooms.
In my defence I mentioned that boys came and went just as they pleased in my rooms and that Icouldn't very well prohibit any one of them at any special time. I also pointed out that I failed to see where the harm lay in this particular case of Damon and Pythias, that such a friendship might well be the saving of Senhouse, who is naturally inclined to be wild and restless. Like Rowntree, he has a habit of cutting chapel, prep., school, games, and everything that is compulsory, whenever he feels like it. He always takes his punishments without a murmur, but he likes to feel that he can escape from the routine when it bears on him too harshly: there is no speck of harm in his composition, any more than there is in Rowntree, but no one here could ever understand the point of view of either of them. Meanwhile the storm rages and Gillman and Senhouse continue to meet, while Hallows grinds his teeth in impotent anger. All the same the iron system will prevail in the end, routine always has the last word: they will both be expelled for continued disobedience of school rules, though nothing criminal can be proved against them. A boy's love for another boy is a pretty strong thing: it can withstand ridicule, punishment, and any weapon that authority can bring to bear against it in the case of such a faithful pair as these two. I cannot see what useful purpose can be served by these iron rules, which allow of no exceptions; that, normally speaking, it is better for boys not to make friends outside their own Houses, and not to encourage friendships in which there is any disparity of age is perhaps open to question, but at any rate strong arguments can be adduced in support of it—but when it comes to a piece of wanton cruelty like this, the whole business becomes silly. I have aired this opinion in Common Room to the nolittle indignation of all the staff. It is a relief to get back to the seclusion of my room and my books after all the riots, alarums and excursions of these school rows. I wish we could learn to pull together instead of squabbling like a pack of gutter children. I suppose I ought to keep quiet myself if I wished this consummation so devoutly, but I cannot stand by and see all my ideals smashed without remonstrating.
It is a mistake to herd thirty or forty men together for meals and companionship for three months on end: we ought to have our lives sweetened by marriage. Yet I suppose that married life would take off the edge of our keenness for our work: we should have domestic interests which would prevent us from devoting ourselves whole-heartedly to our work. Sometimes I find myself dreaming and pining for the life-companionship of some girl who would understand me and soothe my ruffled senses after a Common Room fight. Yet I suppose marriage fetters one: the married man is bound hand and foot, and can no longer set out on great adventures. He has given hostages to fortune and must be content to play for safety for the rest of his life. I can't see myself doing that. I want to be free as the air, free to play games, free to say what I like and risk being "sacked" if I offend. Yet I wonder sometimes, like Charles Lamb, what my children would be like. It would be splendid to perpetuate my name, to see another generation carrying on the work I have begun. There are so many changes to be wrought in education. We live in an age of pioneers: we are no longer content merely to accept the traditions of our fathers. We want to better their methods and results: we learn by the mistakes of our forbears. The Head Masterhates this view. His idea is that only through experience can a man really teach, therefore we should accept the tenets which our elders hold and abide faithfully by them.
April 3, 1911
I have been of late reading numbers of books on education. The days of Thring and Arnold are over; instead of two textbooks on the theory, there are now two hundred or two thousand. Every day sees some new thesis appear hot from the press. People are beginning to take an interest in what is, after all, the most important department in the State. In all of these books I find the same points raised. As at present practised, education does not teach the younger generation to love the beautiful or the intellectual: without such a love all education is worth nothing. How to attain these affections is the next question. One man advocates the abolition of examinations, another the substitution of any method rather than that of rewards and punishments, another sees salvation in the teaching of English literature, geography and history, to the exclusion of the classics, and the cutting down of mathematics—but somehow I can't make much of these books on theory. I make marginal notes, underline passages, copy out good advice and I try to put what I believe to be practicable into practice, but on the whole I am left somewhat cold. I am on the search for a rich mine and, although I often feel that I am near it, I never quite succeed in doing more than unearthing one precious morsel of ore. In some ways the Head Master was right when he told me to read no books on education. He was right because I find nothing really new there.I am told to foster a boy's imagination: I spend all my time in trying to do this, and should do so even if I had read nothing whatever about education.
Only on Sunday nights, after a peculiarly good sermon and inspiring hymns, can one at all reach the mood in which it is possible to discuss quite openly with boys exactly what education means to you and ought to mean to them. Instead of rushing out of chapel and fighting for places at the sideboard in Common Room over the chicken and salmon, I go to my rooms and talk quietly to such boys as can get leave to come then. Most House-masters refuse to let their boys come to my rooms at all during lock-up. They think my influence is quite definitely pernicious and immoral. In other words I try to develop the imagination.
I have made friends during the last two or three weeks with Copplestone, who is a House-master of a very religious turn of mind. He dislikes corporal punishment and is hence looked upon as anæmic both by his boys and his colleagues. He reads (quaintly enough) nothing but Arnold Bennett. I go up to his rooms and talk by the hour about "The Old Wives' Tale," "Clayhanger," and "Hilda Lessways": he is rather a pitiable sort of man: he feels that he owes his allegiance to the old school, and yet he feels that we represent the humanitarian side of education. He is like Sir Thomas More, torn between his reason and emotion: like Sir Thomas More he is going to suffer for his ill-timed birth. Had he been born ten years earlier he would have been a whole-hearted upholder ofl'ancien régime. Had he been born ten years later he would have been one of us and not cared a rap about the old men ortradition. His only course is to resign and become a village priest: he would be admirable with old ladies, and the younger members of his congregation would approve of him because of his love for Arnold Bennett. Here he behaves like Shelley's mother, alternately petting and spoiling his boys, punishing them out of all proportion to their offence at one moment, only to let them off and feed them extravagantly the next. The result is that no boy can tell what he is going to do. He is quite unreliable: he allows himself to be hopelessly "ragged" for two days and then flares up and half kills a quite inoffensive youngster who happens to cough.
I feel really sorry for him, for no one cares for him. He has successfully fallen between two stools and become despised by both the great opposing forces on the staff. He is neither new nor old, hot nor cold, and exactly fulfils that horrible prophecy of Ezekiel about being spewed out of the mouth of all parties.
Thank Heaven this term is over. I haven't learnt much more about my job: I have had some illusions shattered: I have luckily made a few more friends, but boys are queer—one is apt to offend them without in the least knowing why. I shouldn't care to spend my time, like Smithson, who lives for nothing but to curry favour with every boy he meets: he's as bad as the type of boy who always "sucks up" to masters, the very worst sort of creature. Smithson "treats" them all lavishly: he makes fun of the weaklings and the unpopular, he "toadies" to the prefects and generally makes a damned fool of himself. He doesn't see, poor devil, that popularity, like Fortune, is a fickle jade, and only pursues those who take nonotice of her at all. Good God! Fancy becoming a schoolmaster in order to be popular!
May 4, 1911
This has been one of the best Easter holidays I can remember. Stapleton managed to get a month's sick leave from his curacy and we set off for Oxford and the Cotswolds, to try to regain something of the irresponsible gaiety of Oxford days. I had no idea how hateful the country round Radchester was until I got back to the City of Spires. It seemed impossible to believe that only two years ago I had still to take my Finals, that I was disporting myself on the upper river and the Cher, lazily enjoying all the sweets of life and now—well, I felt about a hundred years old at the end of last term. There was no beauty or interest anywhere or in anything, and then Stapleton wired for me—and since then life has been one all too short ecstasy. We stayed in Oxford just long enough to buy tobacco, a few books and some clothes, and then set out on foot to go over again some of the country we had learnt to love so well as undergraduates. Rucksacks on back, we climbed Cumnor Hill on a glorious spring morning and made our way down to Bablock Hythe and then kept along by the river for the rest of the day: we strolled languidly and talked rabidly about our scholastic and church experiences, our disappointments and successes. The air cleared our minds: we evolved great schemes of new schools and new religions, undefiled by effete traditions. Gradually the beauty of the meadows and the old-world villages made us forget our worries and we gave ourselves up to the enjoyment of thetime. We travelled without map or guide and just wandered at will. When we saw an inn that we liked we stayed there, and ate and drank ourselves drowsy. At night-time, when the bar-parlours were closed and we had reluctantly to say good night to the labourers who came in and gave their views on world-politics, we used to read for a little, and then to a ten hours' sleep.
I had taken the "Note Books of Samuel Butler" as my pocket companion for this journey, and I never took a book which served its purpose so well. In compact paragraphs the philosopher sums up with amazing shrewdness, humour and insight into the human mind all that he discovered to be interesting or worth repeating. The "Note Books" are crammed with the cream of his thinking on every sort of subject, science, music, literature, religion, architecture, sheep-farming, authorship—everything that could possibly appeal to any thinking man. It is an invaluable book to argue about. Butler at least clears the brain more than any writer except Swift. He scatters pedagogy and all cant and humbug to the winds: just as the air of the Cotswolds scatters all thoughts of Radchester from one's mind, so does Samuel Butler fill it with new ideas and fresh weapons of thought.
Stapleton and I kept on discovering old Tudor houses with moats, and churches containing carved screens and tombs of Crusading Knights. We stayed for three days at an old mill at Tredington on the Fosse Way, miles from any town or station, and there heard the farmers sing all the old Gloucestershire folk-songs in the Wheatsheaf Inn.
This has been a wonderful holiday for me. I wonder how many men become schoolmasters simplyin order to be able to have such good holidays. It is a great temptation to a man who cares nothing for education: he can submit to the routine all the better if he is indifferent and has no ideals. All he has to do is to sit tight for three months at a time; he is certainly not bound to exert himself very severely by the letter of his contract. Then come these golden weeks of lovely spring when he may disport himself as Stapleton and I have done, prying into unknown nooks and crannies of mediæval England, lazily wandering by hedgerow and riverside, gossiping over gates to farmers, reading to his heart's content on sunny beach or secluded meadow by day, or in the ingle-nook by night. He has no cares, no worries: his salary will pay for all these jaunts so long as he steers clear of London and big hotels. If the truth were told, I think that the reason why a number of men enter the profession is no more than the lure of possessing freedom for a quarter of their lives.
I wonder if this is how old "Jumbo" Stockton became a master. He is a most lovable fellow and quite content with life. He is associated with none of the school activities; he plays no games except golf; he is not in the corps (very few members of Common Room are); he never entertains boys in his rooms; he does very little work and is always ready for a chat or a walk at any hour of the day or night. He just purrs contentedly like a cat and rambles on about Vacs. that he has spent in the Ardennes or the Pyrenees, yachting round the coast of Scotland or caravaning in the New Forest. His one business in life seems to be the holidays; his rooms are filled with Baedekers, "Highways and Byways," and guides to every place under the sun. Of educationalreform or ideals, in other words, of shop he never talks. Most of us talk of nothing else. Common Room conversation gets dreadfully oppressive at times owing to the continued debates about rules and the characters of endless boys. Stockton never enters into these controversies, consequently he is never at daggers drawn with any of us. We all affect to despise him, but secretly we are rather envious of his detachment. He seems quite popular with the boys, he finds that it pays to adopt a strict demeanour; his work is never shirked and he rarely has to punish any one. I sometimes wonder whether he does not feel a sudden pang when one of his old associates at Oxford comes to the front after years of struggling at the Bar, in politics, or the Church, and leaves him behind in the race of life. Yet I have never met a more contented man. He doesn't regard teaching as anything but a sinecure: his main occupation in life is travel. He is rather like a city clerk who goes up to his office every day solely in order to earn enough to take a holiday. The difference lies in the fact that Stockton gets his reward three times a year, the clerk only once; the master gets three months, the clerk (with luck) three weeks.
I suppose that I may regard myself as exactly the opposite of Stockton in every way. I live for my work: he lives for his holidays. When the term is over I love to get away principally because Radchester would be intolerable once the boys were gone, secondly because I want to fill myself up with new ideas, to develop my theory that the cult of beauty and imagination is the whole duty of the schoolmaster. I rarely forget the school in the holidays. All the time that I am exploring new scenes I am storing up memorieswhich I hope to use in my work. All my talks with Stapleton during these last few weeks have been so much sifting of matter which I want to get clear before I start on a new term.
The difficulty is that so few of the men in Common Room think it necessary to do more than prepare the textbooks they propose to read with their forms, while I read up all I can on social problems. I strive to discover new methods of interesting boys in the conditions of life outside school. In so doing I am frequently attacked on the ground that I am making them restless and dissatisfied with their narrow round at school. I am not certain that restlessness is a thing to be condemned: unless you are discontented with abuses you will never stir a finger to reform them, and unless a boy leaves school firmly convinced that it is his duty to leave the world better than he found it, education means nothing.
Stapleton has gone back to work reinvigorated, fully determined to bear with the many thorns in his flesh, in the shape of irritating curates, the dead weight of indifference to religion, morality, or high ideals in the bulk of his parishioners, with notes for a dozen sermons in his head, and a healthy conviction that in spite of temporary setbacks the world really is progressing.
I return to Radchester determined to alter for the better the code of morality of the school, to make boys see that work is not a disgraceful thing to be avoided whenever possible, but the only means by which any one can equip himself to fight the battle of life: I return determined to live at peace with my colleagues so far as it is possible, to be more sociable and less critical, to dwell more insistentlyupon the things that matter, and to try to wean away my boys from spending themselves upon unworthy objects, to foster a love for all that is pure and good and holy and to appreciate the millions of manifestations of Beauty that nature displays even at Radchester for our spiritual delectation.
June 4, 1911
We'vebeen back a month and many things have happened since I last wrote in my diary.
In the first place Marshall has gone. I am much too near the event to be able to judge of it sanely and I can't write of it at length. He was always antagonistic to me. I can't say I liked him but I tried never to show my aversion. He was repulsive in every way, but his sermons were good: he was a good disciplinarian and teacher. Boys in his form were at any rate thoroughly taught. In mine they fail because I always attempt too much. I envied him his gifts a good deal.
The reason of my quarrel with him was Daventry. Daventry is in his House and in my form and is the most astonishing youth I have yet come across. He has a fertile brain and his sole object in life is "to do every one down": he will probably end in prison or Park Lane. He is quite unscrupulous (I have already found him rummaging among my letters and this diary to find out things about masters and boys): he finds me useful just at present, because he can sponge on me for food and books: he reads and eats omnivorously. He has decided gifts and is safe for a good scholarship at Oxford unless he gets sacked first, which is exceedingly likely. Somehow he hasthe trick of getting out of all the scrapes he finds himself in: he has the power of making people believe him, even after he has deceived them before. He haunts my rooms night and day. Marshall resented this and forbade him to come except on business. He immediately invented business by writing verses and essays, which he produced for my inspection at the rate of about two a day.
After all it hurt me to be told by Marshall that my influence on the boy was bad. I am afraid Daventry is bad through and through, but I'm going to make a big effort to cast out the devils in him before he leaves. There are signs of grace certainly: he is very emotional and is passionately fond of reading and music. I have lately bought a gramophone, and any records that he wants to hear I buy for him at once; consequently, I find him in my rooms when I come in from games with a rapt expression on his face, having spent the entire afternoon by himself, giving himself up to the joy of hearing good music. He cuts games with impunity—if there is any likelihood of trouble he forges a "leave"; he is disconcertingly open with me in these things. Having put me in a difficult position by relying on me not to give him away, he divulges one scheme after another for outwitting authority. That he needs very careful handling I naturally see, but why Marshall should have taken it for granted that I only do the boy harm I don't know. Anyway, Marshall did his best to prevent my seeing Daventry at all. That naturally only piqued the boy to try to circumvent him in every possible way. Things came to such a pass that I had to let Marshall know that he was driving the boy to extremities which he might regret.It was rather silly of me. He rated me loudly before all Common Room for interfering in another man's business. He then launched into a diatribe against the uppishness and "infallibility" of the junior masters, and declared that the school was quickly being ruined by the new blood. He ranted at some length and for a wonder I kept silent and listened to it all without comment.
And now this awful thing has happened. Daventry kept away from me when I told him that there was no other course open. He went about threatening vengeance on Marshall, and even started writing to me by post. He was badly "hipped" at being deprived of music and books and food. I don't believe he cares a tuppenny curse about me.... Then came that never-to-be-forgotten Sunday morning when I found him in my rooms after breakfast with a small, untidy fag in tow. They both looked as though they had been condemned to the guillotine.
"Hello, Daventry," I began, "what on earth are you doing here? Don't you know——" He cut me short.
"Erskine has something very important to say to you, sir," he broke in, in a voice I scarcely recognized as his.
"All right; fire away, my son," I replied. "Get it off your chest, whatever it is—all the same I don't quite see what Daventry is doing."
"He—he made me come, sir," said Erskine.
He then told his story. It was so revolting that I first refused to believe it; I thought it was some damnable scheme of Daventry's, got up to ruin his House-master—I nearly kicked both of them downstairs without hearing them to a finish. Instead ofwhich I went straight to the Head and took them with me.
Marshall went on Tuesday. Every one believes that he is seriously ill: after this term they will give out that he has retired. I have lately wondered whether I ought not to have gone to see him and told him that I knew: couldn't it have been possible to keep him on at his post? Never again shall I move a finger towards the undoing of any man, however much an enemy of mine he may be. All Marshall's interest in life was bound up in Radchester. I am daily assaulted by fears lest he should commit suicide: his blood will be on my head if he does.
Expulsion is no cure either in man or boy. It's a frightful confession of our own weakness. It's our fault that Marshall went wrong: Common Room ought to have sweetened his life so that such malpractices would have been impossible to him; instead of that the ugliness and pettiness of the life he led there, the miserable lack of real friendliness all combined to undo him. There are men here who can extract sweetness from their life. What could be finer than the devotion of Patterson to Northcote? Both these men have been on the staff for years. Neither would accept any job, however lucrative, unless he could take the other with him. They live in each other's pockets: they are as close as man and wife: their friendship is strong enough to survive any momentary difference of opinion. They discuss their methods of education, the boys they take, the games they play, the books they read—everything together. They spend all their holidays in each other's company and it is impossible to know the one without the other. Neither of them would be capableof a mean action—they are a beacon-light to all the rest of us.
I wonder if I shall stay on here interminably friendless, and soured like most of the others. It's a rotten prospect. Now of course the boys keep me fresh, but as the years roll on I shall become more and more unfitted for any other profession and get further away by reason of my age from sympathizing with the youth of the time. Yet there are some men, Heatherington is one of them, who keep perennially young: they carry their boyishness with them to the grave. They can understand youth's difficulties as well at sixty-one as at twenty-one. I wish I knew the secret of this.
At present I can play games and take an active part in Corps work and so keep in touch with most of the boys I want to know, but when I am no longer able to do these things I shall lose touch with a generation that knows not Joseph and become despised like old "Soap-Suds," who thirty years ago was the hero of the school owing to his athletic prowess. I suppose the secret is that games ought not to count for so much as they do. No boy despises Heatherington, yet he can't play "Rugger" any more. Privately among themselves, of course, the boys "rag" his peculiarities, but they stand in fear of him and quake inwardly as they hear his footsteps coming down the passage, and old boys can testify how deep their love for him is.
I suppose one of the few rewards of the schoolmaster is that his name is bandied about in all the strange places of the earth. Old Radcastrians meet in the Himalayas, on the high seas, in a fever camp, on a lonely ranch, and they immediately begin todiscuss their old masters. Mostly they speak of them with love if not with reverence. Our little mannerisms and tricks, which we imagine are known only to ourselves, lie open to them and endear us to them. They roar with laughter over our peculiar phraseology, our methods of punishment, our impotent rage over little things like chipped desks and false quantities.
I should like boys to remember me by the books I introduced them to: I like to think of them equipped with a taste for the best literature, gloating over Conrad or Doctor Johnson, Charles Lamb or E. V. Lucas, new God or old Giant, in some forsaken place where ordinary cheap reading would not satisfy any of the heartache, or remove any of the sense of desolation that comes upon the mind at such times.
Each time I come back to school I try a different method with my English classes. If only I had more time I really believe I could achieve something. At present all I can do is to read a short story of Stevenson like "Markheim" or "Thrawn Janet" and then get the form to reproduce the substance of it, or to rewrite it from the point of view of one of the other characters. I have found this method pay very well. Once jog a boy's imagination and he will produce quite original and diverting matter. The difficult thing is to hit on the particular sort of literature that boys like. Only too frequently Shakespeare palls; Milton, Pope and Wordsworth are quite beyond the average boy. On the other hand they cannot have too much of balladry. "Tam Lyn," "Sir Patrick Spens," "Sir Cauline," and the rest they love. So with mediæval legends like "Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight." Most boys after a careful introduction to the life of the age of Queen Anne and the curious characters ofSwift, Steele, Addison and Defoe, appreciate quickly the beauties of theSpectator, and are only too glad as a weekly essay to interpolate a paper on some foible rampant in that school. Boswell, too, they can tackle if only you prepare them by giving a Macaulayesque account of Johnson's quaint tricks and mannerisms. Spenser, Shelley and Keats I find are only for the few. Most of them love Byron. Tennyson, like Dickens, they have been taught to revere at home. They are not very fond of either. But Browning and even Meredith quickly become bosom friends of theirs, as do the Pre-Raphaelites. But by far the greatest boom at present is the Masefield cult. I read "The Everlasting Mercy" when it came out in theEnglish Reviewto all my sets and they were intoxicated. Hallows got to hear of this and was furious with me for introducing "so foul-mouthed and immoral-minded a poet" to boys. Poor old Masefield. I don't suppose he reckoned with the Public School attitude when he set out on his mission of outspokenness. In order to keep the problems of modern life before my form I strew my classroom with daily and weekly papers, monthly and quarterly reviews, and demand précis of all the more important articles before or after debates on all sorts of modern problems. I have started to do more original work myself. TheWorld of Schoolhas accepted two or three articles on educational reform which I submitted to them, and I now have the lust of authorship on me badly. It's a very wearing disease. I am for ever planning books. I want to write a complete English course, eliminating all that nonsense about weak and strong verbs, different uses of the gerund and all grammar grind and analysis.
What I want is an historical survey of the whole of English literature, liberally interspersed with examples, with a list of the books they ought to buy and enjoy reading, imaginative questions which should spur them on to original composition in verse and prose with a stimulating introduction on why, how, and what we should read. I would make such books as Arnold Bennett's "Literary Taste" and "The Author's Craft" compulsory for every boy in every school in the kingdom. I would also make every boy learn by heart those passages in "Sesame and Lilies" where Ruskin points out the value of reading in practical life.
But all this would not gain a boy many marks in a modern examination, and we live or die by results in examinations. English papers seem to me to be the worst set of all. What can it profit a man to know the context of obscure passages in Shakespeare if he has not got the spirit of the play in him actively shaping his own life? If a boy does not feel the Hamlet or the Richard II within him shouting for utterance when he reads a Shakespeare play, he is doing himself no good at all. The whole argument brings one back to beauty and imagination. I want to see every boy's study crammed with copies of the "World's Classics," the "Everyman" and the "Home University Library." There is no excuse for anybody not having read standard works at this time of day.
I try to instil a love of books into my forms by telling them of men like George Gissing, with whom it became a question of breakfast or a precious volume acquired in a second-hand shop: a book must cost you something before you can expect really to value it at its true worth. As Ruskin says, we despise books simply because they are accessible. I've always hadthis book-fever on me. I remember even as a small boy suffering unduly from the pangs of hunger, going from fruiterer to book-shop and from book-shop to fruiterer, wondering which I really wanted more, the romance or the pound of cherries. I know that I always hated myself when I succumbed to the latter temptation, for the cherries were soon eaten but the delights of the book were perennial.
July 4, 1911
The joys of the Coronation were not for us. Some of the Corps went down to London to line the streets, but the rest of us went into camp and had a gorgeous time. We spent the time bathing and washing up, and celebrating Coronation festivities in all the villages near by. We made speeches and helped to feed myriads of children: we led processions and drank vast quantities of liquid at other people's cost. Money seemed to be poured out in honour of George V.
All the same I was lonely because most of the boys I require by me to complete my happiness were in London lining the streets. However, we were not parted long and we are now just back from the Windsor Review. That is the most impressive ceremony in which I have ever taken part. All the Public Schools and Universities paraded before the King in Windsor Great Park. It was a sweltering hot day and we were as tired as could be after our long journey and the fatigue of camp, but no one fell out or fainted except some of the Oxford and Cambridge contingents. Good for the schools! It was wonderful to get down south again, if only for one day, to see real trees, civilized people, pretty girls,the Thames, respectable houses built for comfort, culture and leisure. We spent all the long hours in the train in rushing up and down the corridors "debagging" people, "scrumming" forty or fifty unfortunates into one carriage and then leaping on the top of them. No wonder we were tired. How any windows remained unbroken is a miracle to me.
We have had a good term with regard to the Corps—about four of the best field-days I can remember. The best was in Wensleydale amid peerless scenery: about ten big schools took part, and I, as usual, was engaged in scouting most of the time. It is rare fun stalking the enemy on these lonely moors far from your own people. With a little imagination you can picture the reality ... and in any case it's a rotten game to be captured by some other school. I don't know why, but after you've left the school about ten minutes you feel as if you'd been soldiering all your life and lived only for food and sleep. No meals are more acceptable than field-day lunches, usually eaten by the side of a dusty road in the full glare of a hot sun, but it's hunger that makes the meal, and marching is the best appetizer I know: the only thing I object to about these sham fights is the powwow afterwards and the stupidity of the umpires. Every one knows that umpires can't be everywhere at once and human nature doesn't admit of one's giving oneself up unless real force is used; consequently the most ridiculous decisions are given, for the conditions have always altered by the time any umpire turns up; the weaker side which has been ambushed becomes reinforced by a body ten times as big as the ambushing party, and so turns the tables, and the clever strategist who really brought off a good coup finds himself aprisoner and harangued by his O.C. Field-days are very unfair, but they are amusing. It's rare fun chasing an enemy into a farm-house and forcing an entrance into every room in pursuit of him: it's good to see a motor-bicycle belonging to some officer lying by the roadside and to ride away on it. It's worth any amount of powwow to sit under a hedge within sight of a bridge on which you have chalked "This bridge is blown up," and watch the enemy debate whether or no they have a right to advance across it: it's very like the real thing to be told off to act as guerillas and to keep on irritating an advancing force by appearing at inconvenient times and unexpected places, and holding up their plans and then trying to escape and repeat the experiment farther along the line. Close order drill, ceremonial and inspection are distinctly boring, but field-days are red-letter days.
For twelve hours one gets right away, away from work, away from Common Room, away from games, and it does every one a world of good. We lose our petty animosities: we become more broad-minded and regain our ordinary sense of camaraderie: we sing ribald songs, we fill our lungs with good air, we discuss philosophy or any mortal thing with our next-door neighbour on the march, not caring whether he listens or not; we silently form good resolutions about our work, we think upon great days long past, of famous runs with the beagles, childhood's days on the moor, tramps across country as undergraduates—all the best things of life come back to one on the march. It isn't that we take soldiering very seriously: none of us does that. I hate shooting on the range; rifle-firing frightens me; I should be a damned fool atpukkafighting, but this make-believe is good sportand I suppose it teaches us something. At any rate it's amusing.
One of the quaintest things about this term has been my friendship with Chichester. He is a new boy in my form who speaks but seldom, not because he is nervous (he is one of the most self-assured people I ever met) but because he doesn't want to. He writes already bizarre but quite original verse. He goes his own way in everything. He somehow became attracted by me, and now we spend all our spare time together. It's a queer friendship. He's a largish boy for fifteen, with curly light hair and penetrating blue eyes and a delicate pink and white complexion.
We lie on a rug together and watch House matches, eating strawberries and cherries. He borrows all my books and reads them at an astonishing rate. Masefield bowled him over completely. He has written at least four poems based on "The Everlasting Mercy." He is about the cleanest child I have met and yet he employs the foulest metaphors I ever came across. He is an anomaly. He is in for a bad time here: people won't understand him and every one will do his best to ruin him.
He appears to be quite fond of me and calls for me daily to go down to games with him. Common Room is scandalized and I have been warned by most of my colleagues that such things are not done. It is not good for a boy to be taken up and made a favourite of by a master. With that sentiment I entirely agree. I wonder why every one here does it. But I'm not making a favourite of him: he has honoured me with his friendship. I have no fast, firm friend; neither has he. He certainly is not the type of boy to trade upon such a relationship; in form he workslike a "navvy," he plays his games adequately: he is quite normal except for his gift for writing English. Surely no one can blame me for fostering that.
At any rate I should prefer to leave rather than break off our relations, so people must just talk and think what they like. Of course the school doesn't like it. They hate any boy having much to do with a master, but Chichester has a will of his own and I rather fancy he will take his own line right through life. Not that he is self-assertive: he is quiet and unassuming, but he always contrives to get his own way. Luckily for me he is in Wade's house, and dear old Wade, who ought to have been a country squire, never denies any one anything; so when the boy goes for leave to come to my rooms he gets it every time without a murmur.
The only blow about camp this year is that Chichester won't be there. His people are taking him abroad for the whole of August.
I have been bothered a good deal lately about a peculiarly silly habit of mine. Sometimes, in mathematics especially, I get violently angry at intervals because I realize that my sets are not working hard enough. I so rarely punish that of course there is a temptation for boys to slack in present circumstances: when I find that they take advantage of my ideals to practise this trick on me I usually "give tongue" forcibly and "drop on" them as heavily as I can with a quite colossal punishment. This I take down in a book and—after five minutes I've forgotten all about it. The boy always looks contrite at the moment, but I realize that he knows that he won't have to do the punishment at all.