August 12, 1912
Campat Tidworth was a splendid holiday. Of course the Plain is not so exciting as Aldershot: there are no baths and no towns to visit, but I like the bare wildness of it all, the undulating hills, the wide views on every side, the clumps of trees, the gorse and the bracken. They didn't work us very hard this year, owing to the fact that there had been some row about overdoing it at Aldershot last August. That didn't worry me. I don't come to camp to work. I come to mix with as many boys as possible, to get to know their little ways—I come to join in the "rags" at "sing-song," to see what sort of material the other schools produce, to laugh at the amazing scenes in the officers' mess, to get back some of the sleep I seem to have lost at school, to learn a little military work, to live an open-air rough-and-tumble life for a few days, and in short to enjoy myself. I had to leave early this year in order to take my M.A. It was the first time I had been back to Oxford since I came down. Of all pointless things in life the taking of an M.A. seems about the most prominent. Why should I be supposed to be a more responsible creature because I pay a few more guineas into the already overfull University chest for the privilege of exchanging my rabbit's-fur hood for a red and blacksilk one? Anyway I followed the convention and felt inordinately important and wise for about two hours! Oxford in the Long Vac. might please Charles Lamb but I hurried away as soon as I could. I just glanced at a few shops, reminded some long-suffering tradesmen that I was still alive and then caught a train for Minehead, where Tony met me fresh from camp. He had never been in Devon before and I had invited him down in order that he should join me in the walk which I cannot repeat too often. We went to Cloutsham Ball to see a meet of the Devon and Somerset staghounds, and had the luck to see a kill at Porlock Weir: we slept two nights at the Ship Inn and talked to Carruthers Gould and several other celebrities we met there; then we tramped over the Deer Forest to Badgeworthy Water, in which I fell and had to waste an afternoon in a croftsman's cottage while my flannels were dried.
We slept that night at the Valley of Rocks Hotel at Lynton. I've never seen so many foreigners in Devon. Somehow I resent the presence of these strangers in my native land: I feel that I want to shut the gates and only permit such as can prove themselves worthy to gain access to the Garden of Eden. It is dreadful to hear polyglot noises at breakfast and condescending praises of Watersmeet and Woody Bay, Parracombe and Combe Martin from Germans. Luckily very few of these visitors go far afield. Most of them only come to eat and drink and lounge in the gardens and sleep. They don't really penetrate Devon at all: the secret of her charm still remains with her own children, and with those to whom her children divulge it. Tony was in rhapsodies over the cliff walk to Ilfracombe anddelighted my aunts by praising all the scenery and giving detailed reasons for his appreciation.
September 20, 1912
Tony only stayed in Ilfracombe for a week, but we made the most of our time. He got on famously with my grandfather and kept him thoroughly amused. We bathed twice a day and went to all the shows we could find, coons and concerts and plays in the Alexandra Hall. After he had gone I was left alone with my aunts and grandfather. I used to read Seton Merriman aloud to them at nights. My grandfather spends most of his time attempting to solve puzzles inJohn Bull,Tit-Bits,Answers, and so on. A strange craze to occupy a man of eighty. He is usually to be found at the County Club, of which he is the leading spirit.
My aunts and I go round district-visiting, picnicking at Woolacombe and Lee, getting up amusements for Bible Classes and Sunday School scholars, and calling on all the residents. Tiring of having no active occupation I started coaching an Anglo-Indian boy who was staying at Combe Martin, which I found interesting work. He was a delightful fellow, typical of all that is best in the Charterhouse type. I felt that I was paying my way by working with him, and thoroughly enjoyed it.
In my spare time, spurred on by my grandfather's efforts, I started going in for the weeklyWestminstercompetitions, without meeting with any success. My main enjoyment was watching the Cardiff and Swansea trippers coming off the channel steamers and exploring the delights of Ilfracombe. It is for thesepeople that the shops spread out their garish wares of cheap meretricious novels, vulgar post cards, hideous china and other mementoes. I ate pounds and pounds of cream and was growing fat and lazy, when I suddenly found myself called away to Chesterfield to coach a boy for the London Matriculation at the rate of ten guineas for ten days. The contrast was too awful.
Chesterfield is one of the grimiest and most hideous of towns on the borders of Derbyshire and Yorkshire. My pupil was a slack, good-for-nothing, over-affluent, overgrown youth who had to pass in English, knowing none. His father, who was a colliery owner, happened also to be a Director of Education for the county, and was anxious to know what education really meant.
He had read Huxley, Spencer and Darwin, and no one else. I asked him to come along and join his son and the three of us went through the history of English literature from Shakespeare to the present day. The father was really interested, the son frankly bored. In mathematics the boy knew far more than I did, but he could not frame an English sentence for any money. Neither could he see the use of poetry, drama, novel or essay.
I was taken to the Corporation Baths, I was motored all over the place, I encountered some of the rudest people I have ever met in my life, and I was thoroughly miserable for ten whole days in a house which "stank" of money and where everything was uncomfortable and wrong. Work was the only relief. The abjectness of the shops and the people's faces threatened to drive me mad, so great was the contrast between Chesterfield and my Devon home. How any one could live for choice in an ugly misbegottenplace like this I can't think. It seemed to me to invite crime or at least criminal thoughts. The meals were one long unendurable agony: high tea of pine-apple, blancmange and tinned salmon at 5.45, 7.30 or 8.45, according as "the master" returned from work. I went hungry most days. After a day I found myself studying this new type closely: the father collects the most evil oil-paintings and the most exquisite old oak furniture. They have a pigsty in the front garden, which occupies their spare hours. The old man is deeply religious, very methodical, Liberal in politics, very quiet, very anxious not to spend money, as honest as the day, fond of power and passionately devoted to his son. He keeps a journal containing a list of all the books he reads and his opinions of them.
I went into barracks at Exeter for a few days before returning to Ilfracombe, to keep my hand in, but I was chafing all the time to get back to the sea and freedom. The convention of mess is only less nauseating than that of Common Room.
For the last fortnight of the holidays I went up home to stay with my people and had to submit to being shown to people as a sort of prize pig. A round of tea-fights and bridge-drives, walks and sleep. I don't seem to be able to get going with any original writing. I wonder why in the world they give us such long holidays. In eight weeks one ought to be able to achieve something, write a novel or at any rate perform something useful. Instead of which we travel up and down the country and waste the precious hours—I hate not being actively occupied every hour of every day—life is damned dull that way. There must be thousands of men who would giveanything to get as much holiday as I do, whereas I chafe and long to be back at work again weeks before the time comes to return. It's pleasant to get a chance of seeing my father and mother, though they are never very communicative. My father is out visiting in the parish all and every day, and only gets back late at night, and my mother is usually very busy in the house or shopping. I accompany them in their walks as a general rule, but they are not interested in talk about Radchester—they like to discuss books, but my mother reads little but theological and philosophical treatises. My father lives for humour: he is amazingly witty in himself (his letters are a treasure-house of shrewd and excruciatingly funny character-sketches of his parishioners) and he is passionately fond of wit in others. I wish I inherited some of this gift. I find that I am too deadly serious. I get too excited over my schemes to reform mankind. He is too kindly and tolerant, too good-natured and easy-going to try to shock people out of their indifference. My mother looks on my educational ideals as a sort of mania out of which I shall grow when I come to years of discretion: she thinks all education nonsense and a mistake.
I find that I become pretty well the ideal lotus-eater at home. I sleep from 10P.M.to 9 in the morning and then read whatever I can lay my hands on if it is wet, or go out in the parish if it is fine. If I write, which is seldom, I rarely give up more than a couple of hours a day to it. I ought to imitate A. C. Benson and write two or three hours regularly daily, year in, year out—but I never do anything regularly.
If I were ever to write a novel I should finish it in a fortnight or three weeks. I can't bear to haveanything hanging over my head. I am always afraid lest I should die in the middle and then find all the good work go for nothing. I wish I could cultivate the calm patience of these men, who work steadily for fifty years to produce some little thesis. Would I had the calm assurance of Lord Acton or Lord Morley.
If I could only cultivate a sense of arrangement. Here am I a strenuous and not altogether unsuccessful teacher of English, and I can't even string paragraphs together properly. That's why I like writing up my diary. I don't have to worry about arrangement. I can just write down things as they occur to me, matters of infinite moment cheek by jowl with ephemeral topics of the hour. I have been reading Montaigne's "Essays" of late and derived considerable comfort therefrom. I always carry a book about in my pocket wherever I go, one of the "World's Classics" for preference: it effectually prevents me from getting peevish if I have to wait for a train or in a shop to be attended to.
These holidays I have read very thoroughly John Stuart Mill "On Liberty" and Hobbes's "Leviathan" in this way. Oh for a lucid pen like Mill's or an orderly mind like Hobbes'. Such books are best read quietly and in small quantities at a time. When I read a novel I tear the heart out of it, just as Doctor Johnson did. There are very few novels I can't get through in a day. I usually sit up to finish them if I can't manage it otherwise. My mother says that I can't possibly remember what I read and that it's pure waste of time to read in this way, but I think I generally manage to squeeze the best out of a book in this way.
Anyway I was born to hurry: I think it's a vice, but impetuosity and turbulence are two characteristics that I must have been endowed with by my fairy godmother.
It is this same idiosyncrasy which prevents me from being a good letter-writer. I write to dozens and dozens of boys and friends like Ruth, but I never express myself adequately, simply because I don't take enough trouble.
If genius really means the taking of infinite pains I must be the least of a genius that ever lived, for I only write when it is easy to me, and on subjects that don't require that I should refer to handbooks all the time. On the other hand, Samuel Butler has some comforting light to shed on that topic.
October 5, 1912
Eight weeks is too long a holiday. One gets out of touch with all things pertaining to discipline and rules. As time goes on one begins to chafe less at what seem ridiculous restrictions; they become part of the day's work, just as I suppose if I were in the Army the red tape of the orderly room would not worry me after a year or two.
I have just had young Pollock staying with me. He is now a gunner of two years' standing. It seems only yesterday I was training him for Woolwich. He can't understand why I stay in so heathen an atmosphere as a school. The rules he simply ignores. I find him smoking on his way across the square to breakfast, turning on my gramophone while the boys are at work, sitting in my window-seat in full gaze of the school, glass in hand, drinking whisky. He hasno sort of respect for my seniors, but swears genially in Common Room, seizes the best chairs, takes up the whole of the fireplace and the only copy of theTimes, while Hallows and Co. gnash their teeth, purple with rage in the background. The best of it is that he is quite unaware that he is giving offence. He is extraordinarily genial, if somewhat condescending in his manner towards them. It is a pure joy to watch him with them: he so exactly represents the world's attitude towards the whole race of ushers. "They are poor, ignorant, down-at-heel devils, but it's as well to be kind to them." That is the sort of feeling that Pollock has, I know: you can see it in his every action. I suppose the difference between Common Room and a gunner mess is fairly wide.
I have just been reading F. R. G. Duckworth's "Leaves from a Pedagogue's Sketch-Book." I wish I had his gift for writing. I could a tale unfold of life at a Public School which would dispel a few hundred of the fatuous superstitions that have grown, I know not how, round our ancient homes of learning. But if I did even so much as reveal this diary I should be out of a job in a week.
We are in the middle of one of the more delectable sorts of row. A few days ago a field-day was fixed against Blowborough, but it had to be scratched owing to disease on their part. A House match was hastily substituted and duly posted at 12.45 on the day. One of the Houses refused to turn out because they were not given longer warning. Hallows is in a fine state of frenzy. What will happen to the captain of the offending House I can't think. Games "bloods" do occasionally get obstreperous, but do not oftencare to risk Hallows' wrath. I shall be interested to see thedénouement.
I have been into Scarborough with Pollock to seePassers-ByandHindle Wakes. Houghton's play seems to me to be epoch-making. Quite apart from its merits as a play the subject was (to me) so novel. It expresses so much of the new spirit, the spirit that refuses to be limited by the narrow conventions of its fathers and carves out a new line for itself regardless of public opinion. It seems to me that Fanny Hawthorn was quite justified in refusing to marry the man she went off with. He was just an amusement, an adventure. Two wrongs can never make a right. She wanted a week-end of liberty, excitement—call it what you will, and took it, ready to pay her part of the damage.... The evil certainly does not lie in her refusal to marry the man, but, if there is any (which I take leave to doubt), in going off with him in the first place. There are people who have to learn what life means by getting burnt: she was lucky enough only to get singed and not ruined for life. Her sort does not go on the streets. She probably settled down to married life with a man after her own heart very soon. But does the quiet humdrum pleasure of safe marriage ever give the golden ecstatic moments that come from dangerous romantic passionate episodes of a day? The audience made me acutely sick. They shivered with delight at the "daring" of it—though what there is "daring" in it I don't know. It is more like a sermon than a play.
We are actingThe Great Adventureat Radchester: just half a dozen of us in Common Room suddenly hit upon the idea. We have the new Bursar for stage manager, a fellow called Harding. He hasbeen all sorts of things, including music-hall proprietor, actor and stage manager of a suburban theatre. He does not find it easy to fall into line with our rigid conventions. Outwardly he conforms rather well, being a born actor, but he manages to live two quite distinct lives, one which pleases the heart of the Head Master, energetic at his work, asking no questions and simply doing his duty, the other, lighthearted and gay away in the town where he spends a great deal of his time. In conjunction with one of the music masters he is writing a musical comedy: they practise scenes every night. It is most ludicrously silly, but certainly not worse than 90 per cent. of the musical comedies I have seen. Harding has a distinct turn for witty lyrical writing, built on a lifelong devotion to W. S. Gilbert.
The "club" has improved since I first joined it: we all now try to improvise something to earn our cake and whisky. Harding writes songs, Benson puts them to music, Jimson and I dance or tell stories, some one plays a banjo or a violin, and we rouse the night air with a catch. I don't altogether like even all the members of the club, but when I get very lonely or depressed in my own rooms I go there, in order to forget myself awhile. I don't seem able to make any close friend on the staff. There is no one there, for instance, who matters to me half so much as Tony, and at times I doubt whether I ought to take up so much of his attention. After all, a boy at school comes to play and work among his equals, not to mix with grown-ups. Tony has too many advanced ideas, owing, I suppose, to the books I lend him and the talks we have so frequently together. I must try to deny myself the pleasure of his societymore than I do. Of late I have been extraordinarily pleased at some of the work which several boys have shown up. Really quite a number of the short stories and verses I get are worthy of publication in some magazines. I try to encourage boys to submit their best stuff after I have sub-edited it to various editors with whom I have dealings. Tony has already had one poem accepted by theMonthly Magazine.
I find that the average boy drinks in Swinburne, Morris and Henley with extraordinary relish when he won't look at Keats and Shelley. The first business is to get him really interested in anything: the decadent phase will soon pass. I tried "The Dynasts" on them and failed miserably. The really good stuff is utterly beyond them—perhaps they'll remember later on and come back to it with proper understanding. I must share my own great joys and discoveries in literature: I can't keep a really fine thing like "The Dynasts" to myself. Common Room won't listen: they think I'm crazy on the moderns for whom they have no use—not that they read the ancients, but they do allow them a place in education. The moderns they abuse as mere wasters of time. I have been trying for various Head Masterships and been offered that of Chipping Campden. I was particularly tempted to accept it at first, because of the beauty of the place. Mais, Stapleton, and I used to walk out there from Oxford on Sundays: it is one of the most perfect mediæval towns I know, but it is probably too remote from the bustle of life for a man like myself. Anyway I refused it.
December 20, 1912
We have had some good sermons this term from visitors. One man on the Beauty of Holiness tried to make us see what there was of beauty in even this arid wilderness: he succeeded rather well—but then, of course, he doesn't have to live here. He vainly imagines that we consider the sea to be the real sea instead of a waste of grey water, ugly and cruel. Then we had a most famous man, who tried to make all the school go and confess their vices to him: his mistake was to imagine that there was but one vice and that one practised by 90 per cent. of the school. You can't do much with a man who has got a bee in his bonnet to that extent. Although he was sincere and obviously affected many of the boys, he rather irritated me. I wish I could settle in my mind what is the sort of sermon boys ought to have. The one we had last term on keeping the Divine spark alive was certainly the best I have ever heard, but that may be because I agreed with every word about the necessity of cultivating individuality and imagination. In some ways it would be good for us to hear more about Church doctrine: we are really rather vague about our beliefs.
I am afraid the "ragging" of Koenig is not confined to the boys: he has lately been elected to the "club," and we do our level best to make him drunk: we tell him the tallest of yarns about impossible old customs which we celebrate for his benefit. He must think us—oh, I don't know what he makes of us. In my heart I am really sorry for him. Of late I have taken to going to see him by myself. Of course by now he sees that he has been hopelessly "ragged"ever since he came, but he has a wonderful belief that in the end he will settle down. When this generation has passed on, he will be stricter and the younger boys will reverence him. Poor devil, he doesn't realize that his name is already a byword and that it will become a standing tradition to "rag" him for all time. There is the case of old "Parsnips" Askew: he has been here for thirty years and not a day passes without some silly trick being passed upon him. Sometimes his form will come clad as if for amateur theatricals with the excuse that they hadn't time to change, and they will go on with their (imagined) rehearsal while he tries in vain to teach. On other occasions they come in in uniform and drill; there are endless variants: four or five will faint and the rest of the form rush about in all directions for water or carry the "bodies" out and never return.
I don't envy Askew his life at all. Boys are merciless devils when they find they have a master in their power. It is all very well to say that a man must have the whip-hand of his class. Once he has lost it he stands precious little chance of ever regaining it. Koenig is pathetically anxious to make good. For some obscure reason he loves the life here and dreads every day lest he should receive notice to quit. I suppose this love of "ragging" is ingrained. Although I sympathize with and quite like the poor old ass, yet I am as bad as anybody at pulling his leg. About three weeks ago four of us all pretended to be as drunk as man can be and we knocked him about in a most shameful manner and kicked up the devil of a row in his rooms, half wrecking the place. In the end he had to put each of us to bed.
AfterThe Great Adventure, in which I was toonervous to be much good, I got bitten with the craze of acting, and made my Saturday evening juniors prepare two short plays for the last night of term. That has taken up every hour of my spare time lately and most of my hard-earned salary, for I have to feed the whole cast at every rehearsal.
We've got a wonderful new parson master this term who has any amount of originality and cares for no authority. He preached the other day on the text of "amanbearing a pitcher of water," emphasizing the need formento take upon themselves the duty of bearing religion into the home and not leaving it to the women. I rather think that he fulfils my ideal of a school preacher. He never has any notes, but simply talks in a most personal way about the difficulties that beset him, problems of public interest, even controversial topics. He, at any rate, tries to rouse the intellectual and æsthetic faculties and he is inordinately cheerful always in spite of wretched health.
Boys crowd to his rooms for spiritual advice. He is almost the perfect mediator that a priest should be: his own devotion to God irradiates from him at all times and in all places. He is ever gay and sunny, and refuses resolutely ever to be drawn into the thousand little petty quarrels in which the rest of us indulge: his own forms worship him.
I have made friends with several outcasts this term, boys who don't fit into the scheme of things and are as a consequence morose, irritable and unhappy. I try my best to make them see the point of school rules and all the rest of the red tape against which they rebel, but I do so in such an unconvincing, lukewarm way that I might just as well keep silence.At any rate they have a refuge in my rooms and thank God they take it. I have had a very good offer made me by the Head Master of Welborough. He wants me at once. When I went to see the Head Master about it he refused to let me go.
"Of course," said he, "if you choose to pay the school a term's salary for breach of contract, I cannot prevent you from leaving but——"
I can't see myself able to forfeit a whole term's salary at any period of my career.
So that's that! Of course I am not anxious to leave because of my innumerable friends among the boys: I am rather like a cat in some ways. If I had any sense I should take no notice of the Head, who really loathes me, and go.
Three members of the staff are leaving. No one stays here long, and really I don't wonder. There seems very little point in cutting oneself right off from human life, or the chance of ever making any money or any good thing out of life.
And yet I stay ... I am very like a cat.
December 31, 1912
Myform play was a great success on the last night of term: boys really are far better actors than grown-up people as a rule. They enter into the spirit of the part more quickly.
I spent Christmas quietly at home, reading, overeating myself, writing letters, dispatching Christmas cards, attending a vast number of church services, visiting the cottagers, dancing in the village schoolroom, and gossiping with my father and mother. On the 27th I came down to Bath for the Christmas dances. That night, at the first one, I found to my intense disappointment that Ruth was unable at the last minute to come. That young ass Conyngham arrived just after me. I therefore dashed into the vestibule as quickly as I could to see if Elspeth Tetley was there. To my great joy she was, and alone, and (woman-like) as different as possible in her behaviour from last year. She smiled cordially as I bore down upon her.
"H'lo, Mr. Traherne; it's a long time since we last saw you in Bath."
"Yes, and the last time I saw you you cut me: you cut my dances, you cut me in the street—you——"
"All right, don't get peevish: how many do you want to-night?"
"None, if you're going to cut them all."
"Come now, let's bury the hatchet; you'll have to hurry. I see half the earth waiting to wring your neck because you won't say what dances you want."
"Well, how many are booked?"
"I've only just come."
"Yes, but that means nothing."
"Well, tell me how many you want."
"As many as you can jolly well let me have."
"Here's my card, fill it up as you like."
"Do you really mean that?"
"I do: for goodness' sake hurry up. How many have you taken? Oh! stop, stop, you can't have them all."
"Well, I've only taken eleven as yet."
"Eleven! we shall set the whole of Bath talking."
"Who cares?"
"Oh! it's all jolly fine for you, but what about me, the poor defenceless maiden? Where's the little girl you usually dance with all night?"
"Ruth? She's not coming."
"Oh, that's why—— You must go—here's Mr. Conyngham and all the gang."
"You'll really keep those eleven?"
"Wait and see. Yes, yes, of course I will. Go away!"
So I have got to know Elspeth after all. I never spent such a night in my life. She beats every girl I have ever met in every possible way—she's prettier, more talkative, more seductive, more lovable, more—more everything. She wanted to know all about me and told me all her life history: we fixed up all sorts of meetings and grew more and more pleased with each other as the evening went on. She is thebest dancer I ever struck and likes my style of dancing better than the more fantastic and modern methods of Conyngham, against whom she seems to harbour a pretty active dislike, to my great astonishment. I wonder what's happened. They were as thick as thieves all last year.
The next day I met her again for a few minutes. I tramped up and down Milsom Street until I saw her. I took Ruth to the pantomime at Bristol in the afternoon and toGypsy Lovein Bath at night. Elspeth was also there. Yesterday I went to the rink with Ruth and saw Elspeth again, and this afternoon I managed to get away from all my crowd and have tea with Elspeth at the rink: so ends the year 1912.
I seem to be getting fonder of the other sex and not to be quite so nervous and hoydenish in their presence as I used to be a year ago. Bath has educated me a good deal. I am much more the normal man of society than I ever thought I was going to be.
January 1, 1913
Life has moved since yesterday. To-night was the Lansdown Cricket Club Ball. I divided my programme equally between Ruth and Elspeth. Elspeth was looking wonderful in a filmy sort of pink strawberry frock. Everything went quite normally and gaily until number fifteen, after which Elspeth and I found a sitting-out room in inky darkness. Suddenly she leant over, my arms were about her neck, we kissed ... and now I live in a different world. Even now I can't believe it. It seems impossible that she should love me. Yet she has promised to marry me.
I never dreamt such luck could be mine. She seemed so far above me, so obviously a match for the best of men and not for a poor drudge of a schoolmaster. She says that for a whole year she has been thinking about me and meant to marry me all along, only she was afraid I was already engaged or about to be. We sat out all the rest of the dances. I am living on air. I am much too cheerful and can't sleep at all. I want to go out and shout my good fortune to the skies. What are we going to live on I wonder? What will my people or hers say about it? I only know that nothing will induce me to give her up. I seem to be a quite different person from what I was this time yesterday. I know that then I never thought that I should have the ghost of a chance of even knowing Elspeth well, and now she is willing and anxious to live with me for the rest of my life.
January 23, 1913
The day after I was engaged I took Elspeth up to London with the idea of going to see the South Africans play footer at Richmond. When we got to Paddington we decided to "do" two theatres instead, so we lunched in the Haymarket and went to seeThe Dancing Mistress, which was rotten, andDoormatsat night. We didn't get back till half-past three the next morning.
It was on that day that I was formally introduced to her people, who were most kind and asked me to stay, which invitation I naturally accepted. So I moved my belongings up to the Crescent where they live, and in two or three days I began to receive telegrams and letters by the hundred congratulating me.
Every day we took the dogs for walks, played billiards or went out with the beagles. Old General Tetley, Elspeth's father, is a dear, very kind to me and quite willing to allow us to be engaged and even talked of our being married in a year if I could get a better job than my present one at Radchester. Mrs. Tetley gave us the run of the house and we were left pretty well to our own devices. Elspeth's brothers and sisters (she has two of each) all appeared to congratulate us at one time or another: they are an extremely cheery family and I love them all. After a week of bliss at the Tetley's I took Elspeth up to see my father and mother, in order to let her see our part of the country. She took to them at once as they did to her. The rest of the holidays passed like lightning: so long as Elspeth was with me I was perfectly happy, doing nothing at all but listening to her play and sing or talk—the thought of having to separate, however, went near to driving me mad.
When the time came for me to return here, I simply could not face it. That last morning we walked over the moor and talked about anything to keep our minds off the afternoon and then at 1.48 I took her south as far as Derby, where she caught the Bath express and left me standing, absolutely lifeless, waiting for the train to take me back to Scarborough and Radchester. The pain of parting is the most excruciating agony that I have ever undergone in my life. I had often imagined that it must be awful for lovers to have to part, but I had no idea it meant all this. I wanted to throw myself under the train rather than put any more miles between us. I tried to read: I had bought every kind of interestingmagazine: it was all no use. I tried to talk to people in the train: they bored me to distraction. By the time I got to Leeds I was joined by a crowd of boys whom normally I am only too glad to see. I couldn't find a word to say to them. "Elspeth—Elspeth—Elspeth"—the one word throbbed through my head the whole way back. I kept on wondering what she was doing at each moment of the journey. I started to pour out my soul on paper. I want to go on writing to her all day. Nothing else interests me. I can't work. I take no interest in anything. I can't possibly face a year of this cruel agony. I'd far rather die.
February 2, 1913
I have tried in every sort of direction to find another job. I can't possibly torture Elspeth by bringing her here even if I could afford to keep her, which I can't. I answer advertisements of every kind. I think I must have approached every Head Master in the kingdom.
One business firm wrote from the City and asked me to go down to see their directors, and I did, but all they could offer me was a sort of glorified commercial traveller's job, my income to be solely on commission, which isn't good enough.
I sawThe Younger Generationwhile I was in London, which pleased me a good deal, but London without Elspeth is as hopeless as anywhere else. My pangs are just as acute. I'm working like the devil and playing games every day, but at night I'm so homesick or rather so sick with longing for Elspeth that I don't know what to do. If only I'd got some long-suffering friend in whom to confide, but even Tony can't fill her place!
March 2, 1913
I've applied for educational posts in Egypt, India, Bangkok, all over the world. I've been collecting testimonials from my colleagues. I suppose all testimonials are the same, but I'd no idea I was such a wonderfully gifted teacher as all my Dons and Senior Colleagues make me out to be. It's good of them to lie on my behalf like this when I've behaved so rottenly to them. I was getting on well with my continued bombardment at every door of employment and working like a nigger, when suddenly I got a really bad bout of "flu": it left me a complete wreck. I had to get up before I was really fit in order to go to interview the Colonial Office about a job in Nigeria. I felt properly seedy, but I kept the appointment, and then suddenly lost all control of myself. I couldn't face the prospect of going back to Radchester, so I just took a train for Bath, telegraphed to Elspeth and arrived. She was a good deal surprised and upset. I was put straight to bed for ten days and now I'm recovering from bronchitis. I never enjoyed a disease before, but it was sheer Heaven to have Elspeth nursing me. I felt serenely contented and didn't care what happened to me.
Of late I have been very carefully considering whether or not I ought to be ordained. Periodically I get what seems to me a clear call. Elspeth is against it. I don't quite know why.... She came to see me off at Bristol when I was convalescent. Again the agony of parting was almost unendurable. I clung to her like a small baby until the very last moment, utterly regardless of the other passengers. All the way up in the North Express I suffered horrorsof nightmares. The hills and towns looked for the first time in my life cold and hostile. It was all I could do to keep myself from jumping out and taking the next train back. I know Elspeth does not suffer quite so acutely as I do. I'm glad. It's too terrible a strain on the nervous system.
April 3, 1913
It was all I could do to keep going to the end of this term, but I managed it somehow. I've thrown myself into my work as never before: when I am actually in form, teaching, or in the afternoons playing games I am more or less sane, but I am perilously near madness when the night draws on and the hours creep past and I am left alone with nothing to console me but her photographs, her letters and my letters to her. She is my whole aim and end of living: I've tried going to theatres in Scarborough, I've tried to coach all the boys for the sports, I've played "Rugger" and hockey with greater venom than ever before, with the rather humorous result that I now have spoilt my upper lip for ever. I got it cut all to pieces: it was very cleverly sewn up, but I guess it's going to be awry for the rest of my life. I have had a fearful, nightly fear of dying before I can taste the bliss of married life. I wish I could rid myself of this fear: it's the same sort of funk that makes me rush ahead with anything that I am writing, lest I should die before it is finished: it's a most unreasoning, foolish obsession, but one that I am totally unable to eradicate. I owe more than I can ever repay to Maurice Hewlett. I have found it increasingly hard to concentrate my attention on to any book or author since I became engaged: now I've found"The Forest Lovers," "Mrs. Launcelot," "Half-Way House," and others of his novels, and I have been really engrossed, and literally forgotten all about my gnawing agonies while reading him.
Poor old "Parsnips" Askew has been sacked after thirty years' service, for incompetence. I never in my life heard such a blackguardly action. Many mean things have been done since I came here, taking evidence against boys in confession before Confirmation, putting the blame for wrong judgments on to shoulders less well able to bear them, for example, but this beats all. Askew has devoted the best years of his life to Radchester and in spite of being persistently ragged by every boy in the place for two or three generations, he has certainly done a tremendous amount of good in his own honest, simple way.
April 8, 1913
As soon as ever the term was over I rushed back to Bath to stay with Elspeth. There was an Easter Dance the very first night. Elspeth and I had every one of them together. It was like returning to Heaven straight out of Hell. I had been holding myself in leash so severely for the past few weeks that I was perilously near to a severe breakdown.
Elspeth and I went to all the point-to-point meetings together and I recalled my envious longings of the year before. Now I am as content and as happy as it is possible for man to be. There isn't a shadow on the horizon. We wander about Bath arm-in-arm, have tea at Fortt'stête-à-tête, go to the theatre together, shop, and in the evening Elspeth and her mother make things for her "bottom drawer," while I pretend to read or write.
May 3, 1913
I took Elspeth down to Ilfracombe for a fortnight in April in order to introduce her to my grandfather and aunts. I have never known Devon more glorious even in the spring. Just to take her to all my favourite nooks and creeks and hear her eulogies on them is worth Heaven in itself. She is almost as true a lover of the West Country as I am. We motored to Clovelly and Hartland, we went on the sea a good deal; she is a far better sailor than I am.
I keep on applying for every sort of likely vacancy that I hear of. The thought of the long summer term frightens me. I can confide in my people: they understand. They say, "Get married: you won't be happy till you do—never mind about the money, that'll come."
The Tetleys, on the other hand, can't understand what they call my foolish impetuosity. What's the hurry? say they. We are both very young. Elspeth is devoted to her parents, and so we are at a deadlock.
After three months of being engaged I have tried to find out what are the peculiar attractions of Elspeth. I can't write them down. I don't know. She is amazingly shrewd and self-possessed: she very rarely shows her hand; as an observer of human nature I've never come across any one to parallel her—she never misses anything. She is a quite unusually capable musician, a peerless dancer and intellectual—oh, I can't catalogue her like this: all I know is that I love her so passionately that life without her is inconceivable....
We have so far compromised that Elspeth and Iare to be married in August if I can get a job of £300 a year by then.
May 20, 1913
It was worse than ever coming back to Radchester this time. The long holiday all alone with Elspeth makes life without her more unbearable than ever. I don't suppose people in our position usually feel like this. Most of the engaged couples whom I know are delightfully placid. Men are quite glad to get away from their fiancées and have a "fling" with their old acquaintances before the gates of the prison-house of marriage finally close on them. I seem to have changed entirely since I met her. I am now simply a bundle of nerves enduring agonies of apprehension daily. I am afraid of everything, afraid lest she should be ill, afraid lest she should find some one she likes better than me. I have as yet really no claim on her.
I suppose a passion of this sort comes to most men never, to a few just once and never leaves them. I haven't written a sensible word in an article since that eventful night in January, which now seems twenty or thirty years ago. Five minutes after I have left Elspeth I feel as if I had been separated from her for months and were never likely to see her again. I write the most pitiable, unmanly, mawkish letters to her: she bears with me wonderfully. I wonder if it would have been better for her if she married Conyngham. He has money and certainly would not be in danger of going off his head unless he was constantly with her. I had always been led to believe that the time of one's engagement was full of ecstatic joys. I wish I found it so. All I crave is marriageand never having to separate from Elspeth as long as I live. Every day this term, instead of playing cricket, I wander for miles alone, looking at all the cottages and bungalows along the shore to find a cheap enough place for us to live in.
Even Tony, though he does his best, cannot soothe me in my present paroxysms. It really is sheer cruelty to think of transplanting Elspeth from a place like Bath, away from society and shops and friends and games and amusements to a dead-alive hole like this, where she won't meet more than two girls of her own station in life in the year. I just spend my time in praying for the days to pass more quickly.
I had no idea that twenty-four hours could possibly take so long in the passing. Nothing contents me. I really try to plunge into my work but I have lost all interest for the moment, even in English. The only thing that consoles me is the fact that we have fixed the sixth of August for the wedding. I am like some Lower School fag: every day I cross off the date from five or six calendars, which I keep to show that so many days have gone, so many have still to go.
I have interviewed the Head Master about my staying and he wants me even as a married man. He has gone so far as to ask Elspeth to come up this term and stay with him.
Elspeth has all her time filled up making preparations for the wedding; she doesn't seem to miss me as I do her, which is after all not strange. I seem to be the girl in this affair and she the man. Every day I suffer more and more. Now the boys have nearly all got measles and I am picturing myself as getting them too just when she arrives. I have every sort of foreboding and dread on me all day and all night.I haven't slept since I came back this term. I wish I knew what was the matter with me. Day after day I watch for the post, waiting for the offer of some job to arrive. From the morning till the evening post seems a lifetime—but in the end I have been rewarded for my vigilant and arduous search. I have just heard from the Head Master of Marlton that he would like to see me on Wednesday with a view to my taking a post on his staff in September. I have written to Elspeth to meet me in London and come the rest of the way with me. I also mean to bring her back with me to Radchester: I can't stand the strain of this any longer.
June 11, 1913
I went to see Marlton and Elspeth joined me in London. It is as about as different from Radchester as Heaven from Hell. It is about the most beautiful old town I have ever seen. The country round is densely wooded, with undulating hills of no very great height, but extraordinarily picturesque. After leaving Lewes—it's in Sussex—one seems to lose all touch with the hurry of modern life: only the slowest of slow trains stops at Marlton. We were met at the old-world station, at which no one seems ever to alight, by a courteous old butler, who led us up past the castle and the kennels to the Priory, a huge Gothic church most beautifully proportioned, with flying buttresses on the north and south. The school is an adjunct of the Priory and is exactly like an Oxford College: it has the same perfectly kept lawns, the same remoteness from actuality, the same quaint old cloisters and tiny courts and quadrangles. All the buildings are hoary with age and ivy-covered. TheHead Master's house is set right in the middle of the school buildings: the boys live in more modern houses scattered here and there about the town. The Head Master and his wife were exceedingly pleasant both to Elspeth and myself. They showed us over the buildings, which are indescribably beautiful; the boys are all quieter and far more gentlemanly than the northerners and looked attractive and friendly. We went down to the playing fields and watched them at cricket. They have none of our absurd rules here: there are no bounds and boys are given as much personal liberty as if they were at home. It will be splendid to teach in such a place. Both Elspeth and I were enchanted with it. After a titanic battle, I managed to get her to agree to come back to Radchester to stay for a few days with the Head Master of the Preparatory School, who has always been good to me. Poor Elspeth! When she saw the bleak desolate plain of Radchester she nearly wept. Thank God we are not going to live here. She stayed at the Prep. for ten days and I spent every spare second with her. Every morning I used to go down to fetch her and she used to come up the shore to meet me, looking just lovely. She would sit and sew in my rooms all day so that I could get to her at once after school and I abandoned all games so that I could be with her. After ten days she could stay no longer at the Prep. and the Head Master had not asked her for another month, so I had to try all sorts of people to see if they would entertain her. No one would! So she had to go home. I couldn't do without her: I thought I should go mad.
One morning the doctor came round and told me that I ought to give myself a rest, that my nerveswere giving way, that he would fix up leave for me—that I was simply to go away at once. So without saying good-bye to any of my four-years' friends I packed a suit-case and left.
It seems impossible to believe, now that I am back in Bath with Elspeth, that I can ever have suffered as I did: it is all like the dim recollection of some horrible nightmare. I miss my boys, I miss my form, I hate to think of another man usurping my rooms, my place in chapel, taking my work—but the break is final. This morning I received all my books, my pictures, my clothes, everything that I had collected in my four years and Radchester and I part company for ever.
July 9, 1913
Assoon as we got back to Bath I was sent to a doctor, who told me that I was suffering from a very severe nervous breakdown, and that I must do literally nothing till September but laze. So I have parted from Radchester for ever. Once I was married he said I should probably become normal again. Elspeth and I spent our days shopping and making arrangements for the wedding. We went down to Marlton to find a suitable house to live in and found one about a mile from the school, right on the outskirts of the town, a semi-detached "villa," rather like the house in Stratford-on-Avon in which Shakespeare was born: it has a tiny stretch of garden and a superb view from the dining-room and bedroom windows of the park and the wooded hills of the south away towards the sea. £35 a year is the rent. We measured every nook of it for carpets and stairs and hall furniture, and made an inventory of everything that we should want. We spend many happy hours searching through catalogues for all that we shall require in the house. I have insured my life for £1000, so that Elspeth will not be left quite penniless if I die suddenly. We play tennis a good deal and I read a fair amount, but I haven't the heart to write very much. I don't quite know why.
July 30, 1913
Elspeth and I have had one or two minor tiffs over matters of judgment. She has a decided will of her own. It is going to take me a little time to learn the much-needed lesson that marriages to be successful must be largely a matter of give and take. We are both rather obstinate. I must learn to give in to her more readily.
August 30, 1913
As the time drew nearer to the day fixed for the wedding, people began to arrive from all over the country. A good many Radchester boys and masters, all my relatives, and friends of all sorts began to arrive in Bath. We had an amazing number of presents, but those which touched me most were from Heatherington's House and my form. So I'm not forgotten even yet at Radchester. They had a lively time after I left. In my place as a temporary substitute they got a parson who drank heavily and had to be carried out of chapel twice. Because I am so poor and because our house at Marlton is so small I was prevailed upon to sell all my books, which I now see was one of the grossest mistakes I ever committed in my life. At the time I thought of it as a piece of heroism and great self-sacrifice. The episode reminds me of Charles Lamb and the cake. As a matter of fact it was a piece of unmitigated foolishness. I only got £50 for the lot, and the notes that I had made in them might be worth that if I had kept and used them.
We were married with a great show of pomp and splendour on the sixth of August. I didn't at all likethe gorgeous ceremony: there were too many people. It was too much of an orgie: far too much fuss was made of us. As I look back it appears now as a medley of changing clothes, cutting cake, drinking champagne, uttering platitudes to visitors, complying with endless superstitions, and never seeing Elspeth. I had no idea that there were so many million omens attached to weddings. They must be very unlucky things. It began to mean something when the day was nearly over and we found ourselves locked in a first-class carriage bound for Porlock.
We had a room in the Ship Inn looking over the bay, and met some of the most entertaining people it has ever been my fortune to come across. No one suspected that we were a honeymoon couple: we were purposely callous about each other's welfare in the presence of others and joined with every party that was got up for any purpose. Most of the time we spent in attending meets of the staghounds.
Every one in the hotel was there for the hunting, and the conversation was a refreshing change after that of Common Room at Radchester. One man in particular, called Monteith, who was up at Oxford with me, was very struck with Elspeth and used to bring her great bunches of white heather every night. I like to see her admired: it shows me that I chose circumspectly.
We bathed every day and explored the combes and rivers and villages in every direction. I know no more beautiful country than this for a honeymoon: you can get quiet when you want it. We lunched nearly every day among the whortleberries on the moor, far away from the sight of any living creature: when we wanted to mix with society we only had todrop down into Porlock, and there were always forty or fifty people in the hotel willing and eager to be friendly. It was the most consummately perfect setting for a wedding tour imaginable. There was not a speck or flaw cast upon our complete happiness once during the entire time. It was all too short: three weeks fled past like three days and we got to know each other's little foibles and idiosyncrasies and to make allowance for them.
We went as far afield as Ilfracombe, Lynton, Minehead and Exford: we went on foot, by steamer, in dog-carts and coaches, and we were as merry as crickets all the time. After it was over we went up home to see my people and to introduce ourselves in the married state to the villagers, who have known me since I was a boy. All this month I seem to have been walking on air. I've forgotten there ever was such a place as Radchester or that I ever nearly went mad because I had not Elspeth by me. What I should do without her now God only knows. I only hope and pray that we may live together to a ripe old age and die within a few hours of each other. Then our lives will have been rounded off completely, for as it is we are only happy in the possession of each other. Nothing else contents us.
We went on to London after this in order to buy the requisite furniture for our cottage. We accomplished this in a single day, spending about £150 in all in equipping ourselves with a complete outfit from "cellar to attic." We are now back again in Bath.
September 6, 1913
I don't like wasting all my days in this house in the Crescent. I seem to have lost all my wild ideals on education: I have no boys now to give my life for: all my hopes are centred upon one object, Elspeth, and if she fails me I am undone indeed.
I spend my energies on writing silly letters to the daily papers on the subject of the Olympic Games, of all footling things. Elspeth now cries through half the night because she says I have changed and no longer love her with that same passion that I once had for her. This is quite untrue, but I can't make her see it. I seem to be a mass of contradictions.
Bath seems to have lost its attraction for me now that I have nothing to do except wait for the opening of term at Marlton. I find myself pining for Radchester, the club, the cross-county runs, "Rugger," camp, bathing, boys to tea—and all the savage, healthy years of apprenticeship while I was learning my job. I've read very little except a novel called "Sinister Street," by Compton Mackenzie, which seems to me to be at once very good and very bad. I don't like it so much as "Carnival," but his pictures of his old Public School masters are extraordinarily vivid and probably true. I wish I could write such a book. I want to settle down to some serious writing, but I haven't the patience to begin on a book, partly because I should immediately begin to fear lest I should die before it was finished. I wish I could rid myself of this silliness.
September 11, 1913
I have just been up to the Board of Education to be interviewed for a lucrative post in India. I should dearly like to go and I have the job definitely offered me, £600 a year to inspect the teaching of English in Ceylon, but Elspeth is against it, so I shall have to refuse. I was also offered £7 a week to sub-edit the Daily Tatler, but I could not of course break my contract at Marlton, and they would not keep it open, so that's off. I should like to be a journalist. The work would suit me admirably.
I read "The Story of Louie," by Oliver Onions on my way south at night, and arrived at Marlton at nine o'clock and walked up the hill through the pretty narrow streets to my new home, which Elspeth and her mother had prepared against my coming. It certainly is a great change after Radchester. The only unfortunate thing is that I am no longer my own master. I now shall have to be careful about dirty boots. Elspeth has the last word as to where everything is to go. She and her mother went to bed early and I went round the house on a tour of inspection. The hall is really something to be proud of, with its bookcases and oak chest and grandfather clock. The drawing-room is small but dainty; most of the pictures are ordinary and cheap: we bought them at Boots' for very little. The silver that we had for wedding presents is all put out on mahogany tables, and there are photographs of Elspeth's friends but none of mine, which irritated me momentarily. I loathe the nondescript china ornaments on the mantelpiece. The dining-room closely resembles my own rooms at Radchester. All my old Oxford signedproofs of Blair Leighton and Dicksee take up the wall space and there are two bookshelves. The study contains my bureau and all my special treasures. In this room at least, I hope, that I shall be able to do as I like. Our bedroom is large and yet very cosy. I think I am going to love this house. At any rate I feel very proud at being a householder.
September 19, 1913
I have spent a week on my bicycle exploring the surrounding country before term begins. It is glorious to live where people hunt, and there are large houses, and cars passing the door (we are right on the main London-Hastings road) and the villages are all snug and picturesque, and there are heaps of ripping neighbours who call and look as if they were going to entertain us lavishly. It is possible, too, to get down to a real sea, how different from the so-called sea at Radchester, a sea of blue and green flanked by great white Sussex cliffs. I feel most extraordinarily at home and yet I funk the coming term: I don't know how these boys will take to me. They are sure to be very different from the Radchester boys. I doubt whether they'll be as boisterous or as healthy. Time will show.
October 4, 1913
I havenow had my first taste of life as a master at Marlton. The air here is sluggish, warm and unhealthy. I never want to go out and I always feel tired. There is none of the energy which one associated with Radchester. The place is altogether different. In the first place there is practically no Common Room life, which is perhaps a good thing. We only gather in Common Room from 11 to 11.15 every morning for "break." The masters live all over the town. There are eight houses and each one is quite distinct from any other: the boys never mix. Most of the staff are quite young. Of the elder ones I have come across the officer commanding the Corps who is elderly (he has a son older than I am), a parson, very good-natured and easy-going, but with an insatiable desire for talking. He is the most gossipy man I ever met. His wife is one of the sweetest women I ever met. We have dined there once, but it was a dull meal. He monopolized the entire conversation. There is another House-master parson, also old, who is very literary and runs a select society, which meets every Sunday afternoon to read and listen to papers on literary topics. I should like to belong to that. Some day I hope to be elected. We have also dined there. Ponsonby is a wonderfulraconteur but rather eccentric in his habits: I should think that he takes some knowing. The other House masters are all young and all married. Every one here seems very well off as compared with the Radchester masters. They all have private means. They ride, though not often, to hounds, they own cars and motor-bicycles, and don't appear to do very much work. Most of them live solely for games. I find that I am getting more and more agitated at the games fetish. Although they live under the shadow of the most inspiring church in the country, and though the school buildings themselves are exceedingly beautiful, the boys and masters alike seem to distrust beauty just as much as the Radchester people did. There is one man with whom I have formed a strong alliance. He, like myself, is a new-comer. He is unmarried, very clever, and deserted the Foreign Office, where he held a good billet, to come down to teach the Sixth. He is in the eyes of the school quite mad. He is careless as to his clothes, wearing next to nothing on a very cold day and arctically clad when it is warm and sunny. He has a knack of forgetting what time it is and sets out for a walk when he ought to be going into school. He is a real poet and a fine classic. His name is Wriothesley and is already known as "the Rotter." On Sundays he wears a top hat and immaculate morning clothes with a white slip, white spats and patent-leather boots. Added to this he stammers and is acutely nervous. The rest of the staff are not inspiring. There are several "beefy Blues," a few slack men who take no interest in anything that occurs in the school outside their form work, and one man who ought to be a country squire, who presides over thelocal District Council and spends all his energies on running the town. The boys are all gentlemen, very slack, very quiet, care nothing for work and a very great deal too much for "Rugger."
Unfortunately I have begun badly. Two articles that I wrote long ago on Public School Reform have just found their way into print. Every one here has read them and they all look on me as a dangerous innovator, unpatriotic and disloyal. It is in vain that I point out that I said these things of another school and under the stress of nerves. I am a marked man. Whatever I do I shall be looked upon with suspicion. They all think I am on the look-out for "copy." Elspeth does not much care for the school people and I don't altogether blame her. The wives are very cliquey, and think that they have a right to dictate to the wives of the younger masters exactly as to how they should dress, how they should behave, who they shall know and who they shall not know.
The society of Marlton is very snobbish and divided up into a myriad different sets. At the top there is the Castle clique, who hunt and play polo. Some of these are quite amusing. Then come the school people, who keep to themselves. After them come the professional clique. There are vast numbers of retired Indian military and civilian people, who play bridge and walk about the country doing nothing in particular: to these are attached the doctors, bankers, solicitors, and clergy. Next come the wealthier tradespeople and the other school people. Marlton boasts half a dozen different schools to meet the demands of people of widely differing ideas, Roman Catholic, Secondary, Girls' Colleges, Board, Grammar and National Schools: the place is overrun witheducational establishments. There is consequently no dearth of people, though the total population is certainly not more than ten thousand.
My work is not very arduous and gives me time to write in my spare hours. I only hope that I shall have the sense to avail myself of it. I take mathematical sets all through the school: the boys seem to know even less than they did at Radchester. Certainly they know no English. I find to my intense disgust that I am and have been for the past ten years suffering from chronic appendicitis. There is no need as yet for an operation, but I have to be dieted very carefully and avoid games. A much more insidious disease is attacking my brain. I am beginning to get restive. I haven't the least idea why. I want to get up and run away. It is all too comfortable. I am afraid of acquiescing and becoming as my colleagues, happy as sheep are happy basking in the sun. I never had this before: it's a new development. I go for miles on my bicycle and sit on stiles or hedges and read or gaze out over the landscape and wish—I scarcely know for what. I have lately been rereading all Thomas Hardy's novels. I seem to be a sort of second Jude the Obscure.
The hours are very different from those at Radchester. We have breakfast at 8.30. Chapel (which we only have to attend once a day) is at 9.15, and then school goes on from 9.30 to 12.45. At one o'clock we lunch and Elspeth and I walk down to the town to shop or change a library book at the station, getting back for tea at four. School continues from 4.15 to 6. Then work is over for the day. There is no preparation invigilation for masters, thank God. In the evening after dinner I do a little correcting,not more than is necessary, write if I feel like it, read a chapter or two of a novel, and so to bed at ten. The days pass very quickly and I don't seem to do anything. I am achieving nothing. Most of the day seems to be spent in riding to and from school. I've been reading D. H. Lawrence's novel, "Sons and Lovers." It's about as perfect a picture of Midland life as could well be imagined. Thank Heaven that I'm back in a county among people who hunt and talk the King's English. I have a great deal to be thankful for. It seems a very Elysium of quiet content and happiness, and yet there is underlying tragedy.
The first Monday in October is made an occasion for an annual orgie which rouses the town out of sleep. I have just come from partaking of all the fun of the fair. It starts on the Sunday night, when all the riff-raff of the place march through the streets making a fearful din with drums and kettles and tin cans and whistles, to celebrate the completion of the building of the Priory. The day after is given up to revelry of a rather gross kind. Booths are erected in the main narrow street and all sorts of useless things are bought and sold. On the fair ground there are roundabouts and swings, cinema shows and helter-skelters, houp-las and side shows, rifle ranges and coco-nut shies. It is all very tawdry and shallow and noisy and cheap, but it gives one a glimpse of Hodge at play which is instructive.
Compared with the north-countryman he is feckless, very subservient, slow and deliberate in his movements, content with his potato-patch and fourteen shillings a week as wages, afraid of his superiors (the north-countryman has no superiors) and in all things seemsto be a relic of the feudal system. He takes his pleasures very sadly and is frequently drunk; he finds life monotonous but he is not ambitious enough to cast off his slough; in Marlton he was born and in Marlton he will be buried and that is his life history. There are as a consequence a great number of workhouse inmates, semi-lunatic boys and girls who loiter about the streets all day: the shops are very poor and the attendants slow beyond belief. No one here seems to have any conception of the value of time.
The boys at the school have the same lazy habits in a lesser degree: they rarely run, they amble along through life very happily. They are genial but by no means effusive. The lack of wild enthusiasms, frequent riots, strenuous friendships and enmities is one of the glaring points about Marlton when I come to compare it with Radchester. After a few weeks Elspeth and I felt so bedraggled and worn out owing to the enervating climate that we took a few half-holidays down by the sea.
What a joy it is to be working in so exquisite a country. The drive over the downs, through the pine-woods, down to the rocky coast puts fresh blood into one. I want to sing for the very joy of being able to appreciate it. Nature is beginning to mean very much more to me than she ever used to. I go up sometimes (when I am fretful and inclined to chafe at the prison bars) to the golf-course, and then gaze over the northern vale, and the Kentish Weald, the white cottages nestling under the hills, the spires of many churches, and a great peace descends on me. I begin to realize the meaning of that word "England" and all that it connotes. If I hadn't been in the wilderness for four years I should probably never havefelt quite such a thrill of thankfulness at the beauty of it. These south-country people as a rule take it all as a matter of course: they have lived here always: they have never seen Halifax or Huddersfield or Leeds or Radchester. They don't know the ghastly depression that sinks into one's soul after a month of gloomy, sunless days in a foggy, poisonous, manufacturing town.