One of the quaintest changes in my life is that now I find that I want to write. I keep getting fresh ideas daily. At present I am engaged in editing an "Anthology of Verse and Prose for Schools," which isn't anything like so dull as it sounds.
December 16, 1913
I have had Tony down here for a few days. It was like entertaining a hurricane. He says that I'm in danger of becoming as invertebrate as a limpet. "Where are," he asked, "the wild diatribes against abuses, the physical fitness, the madness about games, the frenzy for intellectual improvement?" I shook my head sadly and murmured something about the air. The boys he looked at in "break" one morning and snorted audibly like a war-horse. "These lads have got the 'guts' of an Ague-cheek, the blood of sardines," he said. "Why don't they get a move on? Do they always slop about like this? You want the Radchester sergeant here for a few days, some one to open their windpipes. What do you do all day?" I told him. "I said 'do,'" he replied.
Perhaps my appendicitis may have something to do with it, but certainly it is a change to find myself confining myself to a slow walk into the town withElspeth in place of the seven miles' strenuous run or the gory game of "Rugger" that usually occupied my afternoons. I go out with the beagles a good deal, but for the first time in my life, instead of trying to follow the hounds wherever they go, I sit on the tops of gates and wait for them to come back and don't worry if I lose them altogether. There is no fighting against the temptation to slack.
Elspeth has had a school-friend staying with her who infuriated me by her vacuous behaviour. Her only aim in life is to attract men. I don't know what is the matter with me, but married life is rubbing me up the wrong way. I am becoming fidgety about my rights in the house. It sounds childish: in fact it is childish. This settling down business is going to be a lengthier job than I thought. I seem to have lost all my old freedom of action or thought. I certainly love Elspeth no less in my heart of hearts, but I hate being managed by a pack of women. First there is the servant, then Elspeth, then Elspeth's school-friend. I never seem to see a man. I can no longer have crowds of boys about me and entertain them as I used to, because it's so expensive and we can't afford it. Besides it makes so much extra work. But the real trouble is, I fancy, that I love Elspeth far more than she loves me. I scent the elements of a tragedy here already.
One custom here pleases me a good deal. All the senior boys have us in turn to their studies to tea. They are much more men of the world than the Radchester "bloods." Their airs and moustaches, their evident wealth and perfect ease of manner all frighten me. I feel very much more like a "fag" being patronized than a master.
I have already had two or three dire conflicts in Common Room over the articles I have lately published. Several of my colleagues won't speak to me: others say that I am trying to head a revolt against games and all the age-old traditions that made Marlton famous: "whippersnapper" is the phrase most commonly employed about me I think. I see myself classed with Tipham of "The Lanchester Tradition." One of the greatest pleasures I get in life is on alternate Saturday evenings, when I attend the School Debating Society and let loose some of my "wild" theories. These do not tend to make me more popular, but they certainly rouse people to speak who normally would keep silence either through nervousness or indifference.
My work I should like if only there were more of it. I get so little to do that life hangs very heavily on my hands. I am become further domesticated by the possession of a dog and a cat. We quarrel over the animals. I loathe the cat: I hate all sleepy things and Elspeth hates the dog in the house. Consequently I go off with "Sludge" (a wild rough-haired terrier with no respect for anything in the world) and tramp the country for miles and talk to him: he can understand my frets and worries. He is very like me, never happy unless he is out and about chasing something frenziedly. Elspeth stays at home and consoles herself with the cat. It's a bad existence. Lately I have succumbed to a new disease. I have an overmastering desire to hear the roar and bustle of London: I believe if we lived there we should be happy, there is such heaps to do.
Most husbands in the city only see their wives at night, in the early morning and evening. Consequentlythey are glad to meet, whereas Elspeth and I can see one another nearly every moment of the day. I am in to all meals and invariably about the place when rooms are being cleaned out, which seems to me to be happening all and every day. The only way I have kept going is by keeping the house full of visitors, mainly old Radcastrians, who come to see what sort of a married man I make.
One curious incident that has just happened will give the clue to my state of mind.
My people have been staying in Cheltenham and as Elspeth and I had been bickering freely and I had been feeling rotten, we decided that it would be a good thing for both of us if I went to see them for the week-end. I have always been irresolute, but I cannot remember ever weighing anything so carefully as I did the pros and cons of this ridiculously small matter. In the end I went. I was intensely miserable and lonely in the train. All sorts of horrors crossed my mind, accidents to Elspeth while I was away, accidents to the train. By the time I got to Cheltenham I was in an abject state. I just embraced my parents and then stated that I was going straight back home. They did their best to prevail upon me at least to stay for one night, but I was adamant. I walked with them, arguing all the way, to their hotel and then straight back to the station, where I caught the last train of the night for London. I arrived at Marlton at two in the morning and had to rouse Elspeth by throwing stones at her window. Sobbing and half-demented I was put to bed. She was in a terrible state: she thought I had gone out of my mind. I am not certain that I wasn't. All I know is that though I quarrel with her in this absurd way,I cannot bear to leave her for more than a few hours at most. It is a most extraordinary state of mind to have got into. I wish I could explain it. No one could have been saner than I was up to the time of my engagement: now I seem to be more nearly approaching insanity with every passing hour. I cannot believe that every newly married man suffers as I am suffering. All this tells on Elspeth too. Such behaviour as mine only lessens her love for me. She does not really sympathize at all. She is becoming cold. My God! please show me the way to keep her love.
So ends my first term at Marlton.
I have read a good deal and bought a few books. I have made a start at writing. My health is becoming very bad. I have not learnt how to control myself or my wife. I want happiness and, straining after it, only attain misery. I like the boys but they are slack and don't really want to learn anything. I have joined the Corps, but it is not so smart or popular here as it was at Radchester. I have enjoyed most of all watching the school "Rugger" matches. It is considered part of every one's duty to go down to the fields to watch all matches, which irritates me. I don't want to watch because I'm expected to, but because I want to. Neither Elspeth nor I are very popular: we have made enemies by accepting an invitation to a House supper and then not turning up because we left a day before the end of term. We had no idea that these House suppers were only annual events and that invitations to them are considered the highest honour possible when extended to masters who don't own a House. It would be useless to explain.
The boys are far more civilized than they were at Radchester owing to the fact that their House-masters are married and that quite frequently they meet members of the other sex. They are more urbane and polished: they acquire a kind ofsavoir fairein their demeanour, a smartness in their dress which was noticeably lacking at Radchester. There is not so great a cleavage between home and school; they spend quite a number of afternoons in drawing-rooms; they entertain the small sons and daughters of the staff, they come into contact to a certain extent with the life of the streets, they are allowed to buy whatever they like in any shops, they are encouraged to explore the beauties of the countryside on bicycles. Some of the prefects have motor-bicycles. They are allowed to play golf and to go out to tea at the houses of private residents in the town. Altogether they are made as happy as it is possible for boys to be. In a word, I could not imagine any boy committing suicide at Marlton, whereas they might at Radchester. Nevertheless there are several things that are wrong about the place. The lack of energy is by far the most noticeable. The lack of reading is perhaps the next and may follow from it. The school library is very old and well stocked with mediæval books of all sorts, being peculiarly rich in archæological, historical and theological works, but it seems to have stopped stocking new books about 1890. The amount of modern stuff in it is composed entirely of books of little value which have been presented to it. There is no system on which books are bought at all: I looked in vain for Meredith, Swift, Hazlitt, Stevenson, or Conrad, to mention a few names at random. There are but few purely literary worksand boys are certainly not encouraged to keep up with the newest thought in philosophy, poetry, drama, essays and so on. Only the senior boys are allowed to take books out; the bulk of the school use the building on Sundays and then only when it is wet. They rarely read anything except contemporary magazines. One thing that has pleased me about my work is that I have been put on to teach history. This seems to me one of the vitally important subjects. Domestic politics rather than long descriptions of foreign wars, however, seem to me to be the first essential. I have tried to make my forms realize the continuity of history, its applicability to modern life, so that they may not be led astray by any illogical sophistries in unscrupulous newspapers. I find that they become really interested in the history of the Home Rule question, the beginnings of the war between capital and labour, electoral reform, the decentralization of government, the power of the Cabinet, the Crown, the House of Lords and the Commons. I want to equip them so that they will be able really to form their own judgments when they grow up and not accept party shibboleths and be at the mercy of any witty scoundrel.
Side by side with the history we read the famous literary works of the time. Each boy (I did this at Radchester) selects one author or book and writes descriptive criticism on him and it, which he afterwards reads aloud, and comments are made by the rest. Boys are astonishingly poor debaters, they cannot articulate clearly: even when they read aloud they stammer over all except the simplest words.
Every night of the term I hold a voluntary class for Shakespeare and drama-lovers in general: thesereadings of plays would go down infinitely better if only boys knew how to pronounce words, how to get up the meanings of passages, or even the meaning and use of stops. One would think that an educated boy of sixteen or seventeen would really know how to read, but only in the very rarest cases can he do so with intelligence. Nowhere is this more clearly shown than in chapel, where the prefects of the week read the lesson: they mumble over and spoil some of the most dramatic and poetic passages in the Bible. It isn't through lack of reverence or care but simply because they have never been taught. Incidentally they have never been taught how to read to themselves: they cannot concentrate on anything that requires thought or hard work. A short story in a magazine they appreciate, and good literature they can tolerate when it is read aloud to them by their form masters; but they cannot tackle anything solid by themselves. They distrust all standard authors as likely to be dull. Their surprise when they are introduced to such a book as "Wuthering Heights" is indescribably comic. In mathematics I still seem to have the horrid trick of going so fast that no one learns anything. At any rate I interest them: I wish I could get the stuff to stick in their minds.
January 13, 1914
Elspethis now with me at my father's home and in bed with "flu." While we were there I got an invitation from Gregson's to write a book for them on education, so Elspeth and I went straight down to Bath, and I shut myself and wrote "Reform in Education" in ten days. It amounts to 50,000 words. I find that I simply cannot write slowly. I start to plan a thing out, then my brain refuses to take in anything except matter for the book. I look on meals as a needless interruption. I want to write all day and all night. The MSS. is now being typed for me, and I am resting, by reading novels and magazines, playing bridge and billiards with my father-in-law, and alternately quarrelling and making it up with Elspeth.
March 3, 1914
There have been endless rows in the school this term and wholesale expulsions. House-masters are told all about them, and the rest of us kept in ignorance. What the whole body of the school knows is hidden from us poor juniors. On what principle I wonder? Elspeth and I fight daily over books. She dislikes any papers, magazines or books in the drawing-room,and I hate to see the best room in the house given over to nothing but clothes in the making. Having sold under compulsion all the books that I so much valued I am now trying to build up another library. This naturally costs money, but, as I frequently tell Elspeth, I can't get ideas to write about unless I read a good deal.
My neurasthenia has been so acute lately that I have had to see the school doctor: he wants me to go into a sort of retreat for the Easter holidays alone. I'd far rather die. Because I attended every debate and dramatic reading at the School Debating Society last term I have been elected president. We have had debates on conscription, Lloyd George, and classical and modern subjects. I have brought up the average attendance from forty to about a hundred. I shall not be content until we get the majority of the school to attend. These debates, etc., take place in Big School on alternate Saturday evenings from 7 till 8.45. That means dinner at 6.30, which precludes the possibility of many members of Common Room attending. When I first began to go the meetings were rather disorderly and riotous, and no one cared much about the subject. There were long and awkward pauses, but now we have managed to rouse a good deal of opposition, and people come with very carefully prepared speeches, and there are less irrelevancies. I have had one severe attack of appendicitis, but it passed off after a few hours. Of course the school has had the usual diseases, mumps and diphtheria. The whole town is down with the latter: it is said that the water is bad, the milk is bad, and the sanitary arrangements mediæval. It is really the most backward, sleepy place I ever came across. TheDistrict Council fight among themselves, but never do anything for the public weal. Most of the members are drapers, butchers, and bakers, and consider nothing but their own interests.
I have been elected to the Sunday Afternoon Literary Society. There are eight boy members and eight masters. We meet at 3.15 on alternate Sunday afternoons, and a paper is read for an hour, and afterwards there is tea. This society has been in existence for fifty years. There is never any discussion, which is a great pity. At the end of term a Shakespeare play is read.
The first papers I heard were on "The Schoolmaster in Literature," Francis Thompson and Kipling, and they were all extremely interesting. Elspeth and I have dined with various members of the staff. They give good dinners, but the conversation is not very thrilling; they dislike anything out of the ordinary; they "never get the time to read," and consequently won't talk "book-shop," which I am beginning to fear is my only subject. They disapprove of my beagling because it takes me away from the games; they don't know, of course, that I've been forbidden to play games. As a matter of fact, I frequently referee the "kids'" games, which are really amusing. They have a quaint habit here of playing all their school matches in the Christmas term, and all their House matches this term. Ingleby, who runs the games, is a passionate devotee of "Rugger," and puts the fear of God into every boy who comes near him. He is altogether delightful, and has a most charming wife, but he cannot brook being "crossed." He dislikes and distrusts me because I said somewhere that I thought games wereoverdone at the Public Schools. His belief is that games have been, and are, the saving of England, the one outstanding glory of our national life. To this idea he clings through thick and thin, and opposition to it only rouses him to fury. He has a strong face, and is one of the giants here. His influence is enormous. He is an ideal schoolmaster of the old swashbuckling type; he rules by fear and the rod; all his boys love him almost as much as they dread him; he always looks as if he were going to knock any man down who ventured to disagree with him. I like him, but the devil that is in me always prompts me to get up against him; he is a great stickler for convention; the first time we crossed swords was on a very minute point of etiquette. A boy in his House, who is taking the Army exam., wanted special coaching in English, and so, not being able to find any classroom vacant in which to take him I agreed to visit him in his study. Of course I ought to have asked Ingleby's leave. I forgot, and he got furiously angry. "Young upstarts disregarding rules of a thousand years' growth," and so on.
I like my Army class work. The English required for Sandhurst and Woolwich is of a very low standard, but it is amusing. These general questions, précis, reproductions, and so on, give me a chance of introducing favourite passages from great authors, and I try my hardest to make them read for themselves by running a sort of library in my classroom. I fill up all my vacant shelves with "likely" books, and just let them help themselves. The worst of it is that they nearly always forget to bring them back. I find this as expensive a hobby as having boys continually to tea at Radchester used to be.
My other English form are preparing for the London Matriculation, which, as things stand, is the best examination in English that I know. I concentrate all my powers on literature. I try to build up a coherent idea of the history of English literature all through, and most of the boys respond to the idea splendidly. The worst of it is that they come to me, for the most part, desperately ignorant; three or four plays of Shakespeare, and Sheridan and Goldsmith comprise their whole stock of knowledge. On the other hand, there is a handsome prize awarded annually (£20 worth of books), called the "Carfax," for the boy who shows the best knowledge on Shakespeare, three set authors, and a general paper on all the best authors from 1800 to the present time. This stimulates the senior boys, and in this, the Lent term, every year, some twenty or thirty boys really try to make up for the lamentable deficiency in this branch of their education.
May 5, 1914
I find that I am getting slack in writing up my diary. I don't quite know the reason unless it is that "happy is the nation that has no history" applies equally to individuals. Elspeth and I are getting on much better, by fits and starts. We still quarrel, but more rarely, and only when I forget to show her some of those "little, unremembered acts of kindness and of love" which make so great a difference to life. We had one wonderful day at the Oxford and Cambridge Sports, when I introduced her to all the old Oxford gang. She was thoroughly in her element there. She was not born to be a schoolmaster's wife. She needs gaiety, amusement, heaps offriends, and an incessant round of youthful pleasures. I wish I could get a job in London if only for her sake. She gets very tired of the everlasting topics of conversation at Marlton, bulbs and babies. All true Marltonians are keen gardeners, and they all have large families. I suppose four years of Radchester made me forget the joys of a garden ... because really the gardens of Marlton are a joy for ever; apparently the very rarest and most delicate flowers will bloom in Marlton when they would die in any other soil in England.
As soon as the holidays started Elspeth and I went to London in order that I might continue to bombard the editors and publishers with copy. There wasn't much doing, but we saw numbers of quite excellent plays. I received a commission from Goddard's to edit a dozen plays of Shakespeare and other dramatists for use in schools, for which they promised me £50. I didn't spend as much time over them as I could have wished. My old disease of hurry made me write Introductions which I ought to have done much better, but my object was to say as little as possible and not to overburden the juvenile mind with a million unnecessary notes. It was an easily earned £50. I finished my anthology, which I called "A Cluster of Grapes," and started to produce a School Mathematical Course, which I eventually gave up because it bored me.
Elspeth and I went as usual to the point-to-point meetings this year, and the Bath dances, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. There are still the same old cliques to be seen parading up and down Milsom Street, weaving petty scandals over the tea-table at Fortt's, girls becoming engaged and breakingit off, strange, unaccountable weddings and stranger divorces. We are now looked upon as an old married couple and no longer interesting.
July 14, 1914
This has been a good summer term; it was pleasant to come farther south at the beginning of May instead of having to cut oneself off from all the joys of summer by going to Radchester. Marlton in the summer is exquisite: the town is just one blaze of colour: it is much too hot, but luckily Elspeth loves the heat, and I don't mind it much. Besides there is splendid bathing in the open-air school swimming-bath. Financial affairs have been a constant thorn in my flesh. Here I get £200, and on that I have to keep Elspeth, and a servant at £18 a year, a house the rent of which is £35 and the taxes £15. I give her £2 a week on which to keep house, and we spend money like water by travelling in the holidays. Worst of all I am still paying off old Oxford debts, which drag us down still further, and my books and tobacco bill average about £3 a term. All the other masters have private means and live like princes. I suppose we ought to economize by having no people to stay with us, but it would be deadly for Elspeth while I was in school if she was always alone, and I, too, like old friends to talk to at night. Consequently we are never free from visitors. Her father and mother and brothers and sisters have all been down, and several old Radcastrians, including Jimmy Haye and Montague, both of whom love it.
I have had the luck to get Tony's first forty poems, that he showed up to me for work at Radchester, printed in a monthly review. I am now waiting tobe operated on for appendicitis. I am going into the nursing home on the 27th, as soon as ever I have finished correcting all my exams. I am funking it horribly. It would be dreadful if this were to be the end before I've really come to understand Elspeth and treat her as she ought to be treated. I do so want also to write something worth writing before I die. It's no good being morbid over it. I only hope that the taking out of this offending member will mean the eradication of all uncleanness and offence in me. It ought to make me better tempered, more long-suffering, more loving and lovable, and altogether more Christian and chivalrous. I read a paper to the Sunday Afternoon Society on "The Predecessors of Shakespeare"; as usual I prepared it too hastily. I had far too much to say to get through it in an hour. Before I knew about my operation I had accepted an invitation to lecture at Stratford-on-Avon on the teaching of English. These summer conferences are extraordinarily good things, and one learns heaps of "tips" about how to tackle a subject in the proper way. I still go on experimenting with my form. I have no reason to be displeased with their progress in literature. I have had quite a number of original pieces of work shown up. I have got to know two boys in particular very well. Every week they read papers to me on any subject, and we sit round a schoolhouse study table and argue. They are as different as possible from each other. One is a brusque, quite clever, very athletic lover of sensuous poetry; he pins his faith to Byron, Swinburne, Rossetti, William Morris, Edward Dowson, and Arthur Symons; his name is O'Dowd. The other, Raynes, is a quiet, demure scholar, who doesnot get on very well in his House; his passion is Meredith. I get more pleasure out of these two than out of any other boys in the school. By far the rottenest thing I have to do is private tuition. This means taking two or three very backward boys, usually in mathematics, for an hour three times a week. For this we get extra pay, £2 2s. for each boy! That is six guineas for thirty-nine hours' work. Whereas I have before now got six guineas for an article which hasn't taken me more than thirty-nine minutes. I grudge the time I have to devote to these boys more than I can say; they know nothing, they never will know anything, they don't want to know anything. And yet one can't refuse to take them because every penny is important.
We have one great function here in the summer term before which everything else fades, and that is Speech Day. This consists of a wonderful service in the Priory, then we go to Big School, where prizewinners read their papers, prizes are awarded, and speeches are made and large luncheon-parties are given in each House-master's house. The vast concourse then wanders slowly down to the fields to watch the old boys' cricket match, and at night there is a school concert. The music here is world-famous. The school concerts are magnificently done. We have a large album of school songs, and selections are taken from these, and there is usually some oratorio or cantata. The festivities leave one slightly limp, and there is not much work done during the rest of the term. The most surprising feature about it all to me was the comparison between the Radchester Speech Day and the Marlton Speech Day. The Radchester parent was a sight for the gods;he was always wealthy, nearly always possessed of a distinct accent, and wore clothes to match; he was hearty, bluff, and a good fellow; his womenfolk gave me no pleasure. At Marlton the parents seemed to be the salt of the earth; they were all aristocrats in name if not in money. The majority of them are parsons and soldiers, and practically to a man old Marltonians. Loyalty to his school is the one shining characteristic of the Marltonian; to them there is simply no other Public School in England. I don't wonder; the boys are perfectly happy. They live secluded from the rotten side of the world in a valley which takes the breath away for sheer loveliness. They have a great tradition extending from the dark ages. There is a saying that no matter where he is or in what circumstances an old Marltonian can be detected at once by his geniality, his good-breeding, his entire absence of "side," and soft, slow, lazy way of speaking. Quietly and insidiously the place is beginning to take hold of me. There is no doubt whatever that I enjoy life much more than I used to; I am beginning to observe beautiful things, nature particularly. I find myself standing stock-still looking at the clouds racing past the moon on a clear night behind the Priory; the lilac and laburnum thrill me like an exquisite melody; the green of the fields, the thickly leaved trees, flowers in a garden, all sorts of things that didn't seem to me to matter much are now becoming ineffably precious. The lights in the schoolhouse studies late at night, seen as one crosses the court on the way home from school and chapel, are amazingly beautiful and peaceful.
July 24, 1914
Here I am on the eve of being operated on. I wish it could be postponed for a bit. There seems to be the chance of civil war in Ireland, and the row in the Balkans looks like spreading. Elspeth and I are thinking of going to Scotland when I am convalescent, but I should like to cross over to Ireland and see really what is happening. We really have treated Ireland throughout the ages damnably. I wonder what will come of it all. I have finished correcting all my examination papers, and done my reports, added up my marks, and now all is over. Elspeth has been kindness itself to me lately; there is no doubt of the depth of our love for each other. I have been making a will, which seems silly because I don't leave much; about £150 worth of debts, and £1000 to pay them with from my insurance. Of course there'll be the furniture, but that's not much of an heirloom. I have had several horrible qualms about death, but, good heavens! it's no good worrying. I wonder whether Elspeth will marry again. After all, it won't matter to me when I'm gone. This is a silly way to talk. This has been a rotten day. I have said good-bye to a few boys, packed up what I shall want for the nursing home, a volume of Chesterton and a volume of Stevenson. I bicycled up to the golf links to say good-bye to the country that I have now so learnt to love; and after tea, in a bowler hat and "going-away" suit and suit-case, I walked up to the nursing home. It's a rotten game doing all this in cold blood. Elspeth stayed with me in my room, which is clean, comfortable, and faces south, until the nurse turned her out. Iam now left alone, and Elspeth isn't to be allowed to see me until after the operation. It was agonizing parting from her, and I dread the night. I haven't slept for a very long time decently, and I certainly don't expect to to-night. I've been allowed as a special concession to finish writing up my diary to date. It seems all very futile now. I've made jolly little of my life. I've loved a few boys, taught a few of them something, taught a great many nothing. I have irritated some very good people by giving publicity to ill-considered judgments, and I have given of my all to one girl; I live in and for and by Elspeth alone. She is the whole of life to me. God grant that we may be spared to one another and learn to be truly and always happy together.
September 17, 1914
Evennow I can't realize it: I went into that nursing home on a beautiful peaceful evening in July with nothing more important to worry about than my silly old appendix, and somehow while I was lying low and not worrying the entire world seems to have changed. I came in thinking that it might be exciting to go to Ireland, because there was a chance of a slight "scrap," and I come out and find the whole world in a death-struggle. It is like some hideous nightmare. I suppose war must have come upon most people as a surprise, a bomb-shell, but for me it has come as all part of another existence. My life is now divided into two parts, before I went into the nursing home, and after.
I was operated on quite successfully, though the doctor took two hours to cut out my appendix and I recovered fairly quickly, though I quite made up my mind that I was at the point of death hourly. My father and mother came down to see me and were awfully good, but Elspeth after a few days took a holiday because she was so "run down." I felt miserable without her, but she was quite right to go. I must have been getting on her nerves badly. The first news I got about the war was on a certain morning when I looked out of my window and saw in the placewhere I expected to see the summer circus a whole troop of yeomanry and their horses. Then my doctor went away to join up.
I had to lie in bed and hear the most amazing stories. First the banks all closed down and everybody thought that there was going to be no money, then people began to fill their cellars with foodstuffs, then day after day came more horrible news of disasters, of Germany breaking through Mons and overrunning Belgium, of the wonderful defence put up by the handful of English troops; gradually it seemed as if the war was already over, that Paris would fall and England be invaded. Horrible stories of atrocities in Belgium I can't understand. All the Germans I've known were dear old Koenig at Radchester, fat old bald-headed tourists at Lynton, sweating horribly as they climbed the hills behind the coach, and three ripping flappers at Oxford years ago. Somehow I had never imagined such a war as this to be possible. I remember now that night at Radchester three years ago when that War Office man came down and implored us to make the O.T.C. as smart as we could because we should be needed in a few years. I had plenty of time lying on my back for three weeks in that nursing home to think it all out. I had heaps of visitors bringing flowers and fruit and papers, but I was restless and miserable none the less.
As soon as I was able I went up to Bath and took Elspeth to Ilfracombe: there I heard Hemmerde calling for recruits—it was just like Amyas Leigh asking for another generation of Devon lads to help to beat the Spaniards. All the same it's different now. All the glamour and glory of war seem tohave gone for ever: this is simply horrible, a massacre by machinery. Perhaps my mind is not attuned to it. I am still very weak, but the whole business seems preposterous.
We went down to Portsmouth to see some friends who had just joined up and we saw the troopships, the searchlights at night, the coast defences, the trains full of cheering soldiers, the streets full of raw recruits. We went on to London and there were posters like advertisements for soap imploring every man to join up and save his country. Girls presented white feathers to any one in mufti, people in trains invariably asked each other fiercely why they weren't in khaki. By far the most violent of these interrogators were peaceful-looking old ladies and young, healthy parsons. I went down to Hampton Court to stay with Tony, who, of course, has gone into the Army. All Radchester was in camp at Aldershot when war broke out and the entire school wenten blocto try to enlist. Those who were refused are crying with anger at the thought that they will have to go back to Radchester next term. There was some talk of the schools all being closed down. All the young masters on the staff at Marlton have gone, and every boy of eighteen and over and many a good deal younger. They needn't complain that the Public Schools aren't doing their part. Every single fit man in them joined at once. I wish I hadn't had my appendix out: then I could have gone. Elspeth says I couldn't, because of my incipient madness. I bet I would, though it would have been Hell to have left her. How I should have gloried in this war before I became engaged. All the Radcastrians are greatly"bucked" about it. At last adventure has come to them with arms full.
November 10, 1914
Just when I ought to keep up my diary more accurately than ever I leave it for weeks. It's no good putting in all the news about the war: that is all seared into my soul. These three months have seen the deaths of all the men who seemed to me to matter when I was at Oxford. All the men of my age were killed off at once: they got out at the beginning. From the other side they tell me it's just an endless line of blood and mud, periods of intense boredom relieved by moments of fearful fright. Every one thought in August that it would be all over by Christmas. Kitchener gives it three years. My God! there'd be no England left after three years. I went up to London to lecture on the teaching of English and found the streets all darkened, which makes the town incredibly beautiful and eerie. I suppose the idea is to bring the war home to us more closely.
This term has been altogether strange. We are chastened and quite different. Young boys are now prefects, heads of Houses, captains of games: the Corps has ousted athletics. It seems wrong to be chasing up and down a "Rugger" field while our brothers and dearest friends are being killed within a few hundred miles. We have done an amazing amount of Corps work this term: everybody is as keen as mustard to make himself really fit. Boys are reading their Stonewall Jackson, and Haking, and John Buchan, and everything that they can lay their hands on to inform themselves of what is going onacross the Channel and how they shall best occupy their time here in preparation. By a very quaint irony, for the first time in my life I have noticed that boys are becoming really anxious to learn. Somehow intellectual pursuits seem to be worth striving after: there is a perceptible wish in every boy's mind to explore the garner-house of wisdom.
Never have I felt that the schoolmaster's job was so important as I do now. Many of these boys will, please God, not have to fight, but they will all have to take an active part in the reconstruction of England. Every hour of every day we shall have to keep before them the ideals which we mean to see put into practice by the next generation. Last year we were in danger of getting sloppy: we were too rich, we were chasing after every kind of new pleasure, not a thought was given to the myriad problems of capital and labour, of poverty, of housing, of health, of education. We are all trying our best at last to see which of us can do the most for the sake of England: the name didn't mean much to us so long as she was safe; now that she is in deadly peril we are beginning to realize all that she is to us. Our new activity in the Corps is a beginning: we are drilling, digging, scouting, signalling, lecturing, bombing, bridge-building, range-finding, entrenching—learning up tactics and strategy. So far as actual military skill is concerned we are doing our best, but there is an enormous amount of leeway to be made up in other departments of life. For one thing, I believe the school is far more devout than it was. Suffering has sent us back to the Cross. We have weekly Intercession Services for our old boys. These are voluntary, but very few boys absent themselves. Our preachers seem almost inspired. It mustbe much easier to preach now than it used to be: we are all only too anxious to know what to do: "Here am I, send me" is the cry of every one in chapel. Our religion is a much more vital thing than it ever used to be. We are all working at top speed all the time. I only hope we don't break down as the newspapers have. Every one of the papers except theDaily Telegraphhas lost its head not once nor twice since war broke out. It is almost painful to read the leading articles at present. They blame everybody in authority for failure to cope with the present situation. How the German Press must gloat.
In the place of the young men who have left us we have had to employ very old men, who are for the most part extraordinarily genial and take to the work as a trout to water. Not all of them, alas, have been successful. Boys still "rag" a man who is incompetent, and they have little respect for age, but on the whole these old men have fallen into line far better than any one would have dreamt possible.
December 13, 1914
Our first term of war is nearly over. It has been a strange, unreal sort of life. Every day some fresh disaster befalls us in the shape of casualties. Every week some boys come back, healthy, handsome and extraordinarily grown-up in their officers' uniforms: we at school seem to be settling down to play our part. The officers of the O.T.C. have been told to carry on where they are, that the work they are doing is invaluable: so we content ourselves with that, though it seems very little. We have had a navalvictory at the Heligoland Bight, and a defeat and a victory off the coast of South America. The Germans advance no more in France, the whole world seems to be preparing to rise in arms on the slightest provocation. Every week Horatio Bottomley and Belloc explain to us that the end is in sight and the Northcliffe Press tells us that we can never win but shall wage an age-long war. We hope the one and fear the other—and carry on.
It is a strange thing, but the beginning of war which I expected would quash all chance of writing has seen the beginning of my success.Blackwood's, theContemporaryand theNational Reviewhave all printed articles of mine, and I am writing as much as I can, spurred on by this undreamt-of piece of luck.
Although it is a time of war and full of horrors the term passed very quickly indeed. Elspeth and I are now absolutely united. Her father has gone out to Egypt with a staff appointment, her mother is still in Bath, both her brothers are out in France. All entertainments at Marlton have suddenly ceased. There are no more dinner-parties, no more House suppers, school matches were all "scratched" this term, and the people in the town no longer play "bridge." We are rapidly becoming a soberer people and our efforts are directed to one object only, the winning of the war. Yet the strange thing is that so many things go on just as usual. People seem to have any amount of money, the shops advertise the same old extravagant useless things; dances, theatres, horse-racing, football matches still continue—there is no lack of these things any more than there was during the Boer War.
Perhaps we are learning to "do without" gradually.It must be different in France and Belgium. I shall never forget my first sight of Belgian refugees and wounded soldiers arriving at Marlton station. Somehow we don't, we can't realize the horror of it in this peaceful valley, but the tragic faces of these tortured, homeless women penetrates at one flash into the very heart. All the gay, irresponsible women who last July spent their days on the polo ground now vie with one another in providing homes for the Belgians and hospitals for the wounded. Girls who were accustomed to do nothing more arduous than hunt or take the spaniels for a walk now nurse through the night, scrub floors, act as kitchenmaids, drive motor-vans and generally carry on the work that is left for them to do. So many of them have husbands or brothers fighting that they would go mad with brooding too much if they were not working every hour of every day. There may be a few who are still untouched by the war, but there are certainly none in Marlton. Boys who left at the end of last term have already come back decorated with the Military Cross. Letters reach me from all parts of the globe from old boys of Radchester who are sailing to fight in some region I never heard of before the war. And all the time we try to preserve the spirit that has made England great here at home in Marlton. It used to seem something of a backwater before the war—how much more is it one now: the milkmen and the farm labourers, the shop assistants, and the railway porters who had never been farther afield than Exeter are now in Egypt, Malta, India, France, all over the globe. What a widening of experience, what books will be written when it is all over. For the last year we have thought of nothing but the wonderfuladventures of Captain Scott and his fellow-adventurers in their quest for the South Pole. Commander Evans came to Marlton and lectured to us about the heroic death of Captain Oates: we were all swept off our feet with enthusiasm but no one in the hall ever dreamt that he would be called upon to emulate such a deed, and yet now daily, hourly, that feat is being rivalled. So long as there are any men left in this country there is no need to fear that we shall lack for heroes. Boys, who when they were at school were looked upon as feckless funks, have performed valorous exploits, which any one remembering their school days would have regarded as absolutely beyond the bounds of belief.
January 20, 1915
I get heartily sick of the holidays these days because there is so little to do, and I hate to see all my pals training while I am doing nothing at all. Schoolmastering seems so dull, but there is no doubt where one's duty lies.
April 15, 1915
I have now finished a second term at Marlton under war conditions. I find that the war has brought us closer together, masters and boys alike. We have had lectures from wounded soldiers on the campaign in different parts of the globe. The Corps is more flourishing than ever. Our favourite amusement now is the night-attack, which is nearer the real thing than anything else we do. I went down to a depot the other day to get some "tips" and saw some first-rate signalling, the Lewis gun, and some bombing practice.
Poor Elspeth about half-way through the term complained to me one day that she felt too rotten to keep some engagement that she was due for and I fetched the doctor much against her will, and to my horror he told me that she had appendicitis and must be operated on immediately. We took her over to Lewes and put her into a nursing home, and I left her there late one night after a last passionate embrace and was taken over by Leary the next day in his side-car to hear the result of the operation and was told that she had come through it all right. I shall never forget the agony of waiting to hear the verdict. I made Leary motor me at terrific speed half across Sussex to keep my mind from dwelling too insistently on it. Her heart is weak and she nearly went under, but thank God she pulled through in the end, although she was very weak for a long time after. My life alone during her illness I can't dwell upon: it was altogether too horrible. I roamed about the countryside absolutely disconsolate. I have no use for life at all without her. Every day as soon as work was over I "push-biked" the eight miles into Lewes to see her and talk for a little, then cycled home again to my lonely cottage. I was nearer dementia then than I have ever been. I have got to know more of the boys in the school this last term. They are a wonderfully fine lot, particularly O'Dowd and Raynes, who still write weekly essays for me and discuss literary problems.
I tried to actThe Younger Generationin my Debating Society, but the idea was quashed by the Censor. I have altered the old system of reading round a table and substituted a much more effective plan. We now read in Big School from the platformstanding up, with action and dresses complete. Instead of each individual member having to buy copies of the play I have now bought numbers of copies and formed a library upon which any member of the school may draw just as he likes.
We have had one or two strange temporary masters. One, an elderly scholar, had an eccentric habit of always searching the bottoms of one's trousers for matches: he had once heard of a man being burnt alive that way and was in a continual fright lest it should happen to some one whom he knew. We have got a new Sixth Form tutor, a fellow of Queen's, Oxford, who has become a firm friend of mine. He is, like most of my colleagues, very well off and has furnished himself with a splendid library which he allows me to use. I have done a good deal of writing and much reading: my books are costing me less because I am doing a good deal of reviewing for the London papers. One of the strangest effects of the war up to now has been its result upon the world of papers and books. Paper is very expensive and there is great difficulty in getting MSS. printed and bound, but people are all buying books in great numbers, particularly poetry and fiction.
Owing to my own smaller successes I have received invitations to meet and to stay with some of the leading writers of the day, which needless to say I have accepted, though if I go I shall have to go without Elspeth, for as soon as it was possible we took her by car from the nursing home in Lewes all the way to her home at Bath, where the doctor says she must stay for some months.
I can't face next term without her: I don't know what I shall do and yet I cannot conscientiouslyexpect her to come back to me until she is quite fit to look after the house again. At present she is recovering very slowly and looks dreadfully weak and thin.
May 4, 1915
When the term was over I did go round to the various houses to which I had been invited and met the queerest people. I was nervous and irritable without Elspeth and never stayed more than a night or two in any one house and kept on rushing back to see how Elspeth was getting on.
These Easter holidays have been rather nightmarish because of Elspeth's illness. I could not settle down to anything, and of course we could not go out much because she could not walk. On the other hand, for some reason I was unable to concentrate my attention on writing. Everything was in a state of blur owing to the shock I sustained at her operation. In some degree last term was like the same term two years ago when I was engaged. I tried to hurl myself into my work: I refereed on and coached the junior games, I devised all sorts of schemes to interest my boys in English, I had boys up to tea to remove some of my loneliness, but I was gradually going out of my mind because I had no Elspeth by me to soothe me. And all the time the war has been weighing very heavily upon me. The waste of the flower of this country is frightful. On April 23 young Rupert Brooke died, and we have lost the premier poet of the age before he had had the chance to transmit a quarter of the splendid things that were burning inside him. Somehow I feel his loss more than that of any one I have known.
July 31, 1915
Thisterm has been the worst in my recollection. Elspeth was not allowed to come back at the beginning of term because she was not able to cope with the housework, so I thought to compromise by going up to Bath every week-end to see her. I did this, but the five days between each visit became so ghastly that I could not face them. I begged her to come back at all costs to save my brain. She did so for a few weeks, to her mother's intense indignation and her own no little wrath. Both of them thought it merely gross selfishness on my part to demand such a thing, as of course in a sense it was. But I really was ill. The local doctor could do nothing and sent me up to a specialist in Harley Street, who told me to go to the Highlands for the whole of the summer holidays and take a complete rest. I'm suffering from an over-active brain. So to-morrow we are to set off for the north of Scotland.
This term has passed uneventfully enough so far as the school is concerned. I went to see the Bishop about being ordained and he welcomed the suggestion, but I am still not clear in my mind about it. I have always had a hankering after the church, but I wonder if it is simply that I may find an excuse to preach. I know I am always preaching in form. I spend thewhole week preparing subjects for my Sunday's divinity lesson, which is really a hotch-potch of the week's events with a moral tag appended.
I have watched a few cricket matches and tried to rid myself of my nervous behaviour in front of senior masters. I always behave in Common Room as if I were a small boy: I have never been able to eradicate the idea that these aremymasters whenever I meet them.
In my writings I am becoming too critical, but it is all rather superficial. I know that there are grave abuses in the Public School system, though the war swept away at least half of them; I also know that I have a reputation here of indulging quite indiscriminately in wholesale destructive diatribes: "the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up" as they say of me. I have not tempered my enthusiasm with reticence or bridled my tongue severely enough. The result is that I have divided the school into two great factions, the loyalists and the seceders. This is what my enemies lay to my charge. I cannot believe that my influence carries any weight at all. I am only a junior master and I don't mix with the boys here as I used to at Radchester for the simple reason that I live too far away from the school and that I have a wife. The only people who see much of the boys are the House-masters and the House tutors. The rest of us take a few sets, control, say, a debating or natural history society or choir, perhaps are responsible for a form, and there's an end of our influence. By bowling at the nets one meets a few others, in the Corps one comes across two Houses, and of course the school prefects are known to all the staff. But there is very little intimacy betweenboy and master, though such relations are as much encouraged here as they were discouraged at Radchester. A few of my closer friends come up to borrow books and stay and talk sometimes, others again come to hear the gramophone or to play the piano to me, but I have all too few friends among the boys. There have been one or two colossal rows this term, in spite of the fact that we are at war. Boy-nature seems to remain the same in spite of all—and not only boy-nature but adult nature, for even here members of Common Room fight one against the other like tigers when one man infringes on another man's rights. All these disputes have quite petty beginnings, but they assume alarming proportions in a very short space of time. I have been preaching about the dangers of over-athleticism. The consequence is that there is a blood-feud between those who worship at the shrine of games and those who think that games should be played merely as recreation. This has now become a question of Houses. There are Houses where everything is put second to games and others where games are put last. It is all rather comic because it really means nothing at all. The whole matter is always just personal. There are Houses with a tradition against taking the Corps seriously: there are others where they think of nothing else. One good sign I have noticed of late is the resuscitation of House Debating and Literary Societies. Boys debate among themselves on all sorts of school topics, internal politics; the spirit of criticism is abroad: boys are beginning to think, there is hope for them. There are, however, many masters who tell me that boys ought not to think: they ought to accept and not question, that toinculcate the carping spirit is a malicious practice. I wonder how much this is true. I stand and everyone knows it, for the cultivation of the æsthetic and the intellectual first, just because in the past they have been so despised. I am myself neither æsthetic nor intellectual but I have a craving after each. Athletics in themselves cannot satisfy the inner cravings of man: he wants more nourishment than that. I like to see the school magazine filled with good sound articles of general interest and poetry, as well as accounts of the term's doings.
I cannot see why the latter should oust the former any more than the former should supplant the latter. I want fair dealing. At present there is no fair dealing. Consequently some of the brighter spirits have produced magazines of their own, satirical, comic, serious, any and every sort as a counterblast to the school magazine. These illegitimate productions have a short life but a quite merry one. They create endless diversion owing to the fact that the satire is too carefully veiled for any but the very few to understand it; people are set guessing as to the possible authors, and there is always a rumour that the paper is about to be suppressed. They show a spark of humour, whereas the legitimate magazine is always deadly serious: when it aims at humour, as in its correspondence, it only succeeds in being ineffably tedious and dull.
September 20, 1915
We had a wonderful holiday in Scotland. We went via Edinburgh to Kingussie, which is in Strathspey, in full view of the Cairngorms; the scenery between Blair Atholl and Kingussie is magnificently ruggedand grand. Kingussie itself is a fair-sized village of white-washed houses with two quite excellent hotels, both under the same management. We chose the cheaper and had the luck to have the run of the other. From the very first we made friends. By a strange chance two of the cheeriest and most typical of the best sort of Marltonians happened to be up there and we went for many excursions together, bathing in lochs and burns and climbing cairns.
Acting on my specialist's advice I began to take up golf and became immediately seized with a mania. Before we left I was playing thirty-six holes a day. The golf-course at Kingussie is right up the mountainside and is truly hazardous and sporting. There were crowds of visitors, all of them as merry as could be. Except for a few men in kilts and trains full of sailors passing through, one would never have believed that we were a nation at war. Every sort of person came and stayed at our hotel during the eight weeks that we were there, from Mr. Asquith and Mr. McKenna to the most astoundingly vulgar shopkeepers from Dundee and Glasgow. The wonderful fresh air soon brought colour to Elspeth's cheeks and she began to take exercise and climb some of the peaks near by with me: she also bathed with me in the Spey and sat and painted the blue hills while I wrote.
We made friends with the English chaplain and his wife, with the hotel proprietor who had amassed a wonderful collection of curios, with a peerless Marlborough boy whom I am never likely to forget, with a few convalescent officers and most of the residents. Never a day passed that was not full of enjoyment. The weeks passed all too quickly but I rapidly grew better and my nerves became quieterand my outlook on life less turbulent and queer. I owe my cure mainly to golf, which kept my thoughts off writing or the war.
I have had articles in most of the important reviews and in several of the weeklies. I find that I am being hailed as an educational expert and a literary critic, whereas in reality I am neither. I am a poor, rather demented creature with very high ideals and in my anxiety to see some of my ideas carried out I offend many good men, put myself into a false position and ruin myself in other people's estimation. I am over-enthusiastic. If I could only learn to go more slowly. It is the same old story about my mathematical teaching. I can't understand why a boy should not acquire the rudiments of mathematics quickly. I know that he could if he would only bestir himself. So if only the schools as a whole would bestir themselves, we should get boys interested in something more important than games. I go the wrong way to work. I haven't got the tact of a flea. As my first publisher said when I sent him the draft of my first novel, "This is too damned honest." That has been my failure through life. Instead of turning things over in my mind I just blurt out what I am thinking at the moment and get angry because every one doesn't straightway agree.
Elspeth and I spent a few days at Nairn in order to taste the sea breezes and I played golf with a Cambridge billiard Blue, who has now a post in the British Museum. Nairn is full of interesting people, but it is a strange anomaly of a place. In parts it is as hideous as Radchester, in others, as in the view across to Cromarty, it is exquisitely beautiful: the colours are soft and of every hue. I found this partof Scotland interesting from a literary point of view. There is certainly a touch ofMacbethin Forres: and "Ossian" could only have been written by a man who knew Kingussie. I hope before I die that we shall once again have the chance to see Loch Laggan: I have never been more taken with a piece of scenery in my life. Laggan is like a miniature sea, set in between two beautifully shaped hills, ideally quiet, perfect for bathing and for rambling about on the moors. But it is too far out of the world for a man situated as I am now, who cannot bear to be out of touch with the latest movements. Laggan would be the place to go to worry out some new philosophy or to compose some wonderful new piece of music. I think I could write a novel there. But there must be no rumours of wars over the other side of the hill. In these days the heart pines for London and friends: it sounds ungrateful to say this, for Scotland did a great deal for me, and Elspeth and I both benefited enormously from our stay and were loath to go.
December 31, 1915
We determined to take in a paying guest this term: our Scottish tour cost us £100. Luckily we got an exceedingly interesting man, just down from Oxford, who has come here to take temporary work. He is a great historian and exceedingly keen on political economy. He began by being badly "ragged" by the boys and detested by his colleagues because of his rather new ideas and revolutionary principles: I came to like him very much. He entertained Elspeth and me a good deal. When he first arrived he was deadly serious, but we soon laughed him into a more equablestate of mind: unfortunately for us he was conscripted although he was nearly blind, and so he had to go.
I have three times been up to the War Office to try to get out to the Front, but it is no good thinking of it till I am sane again. The last War Office official whom I saw sent me to the greatest brain specialist in London, and I now go up every week to be quietened down. He won't let me write more than is essential for my well-being, he tries to put me into an easy state of mind where I cease from troubling about anything. The idea is to get the nervous tissues to work evenly, not to get frayed and harassed by the millions of perplexing doubts and obsessions which flit across my mind. I am doing my best to act on his advice. It is all a question of whether my will is strong enough to impose a brake upon my mind, which is always showing signs of breaking loose from the necessary restraint that sanity demands. He tells me to enjoy life, not to take myself so seriously, to let things slide and adjust themselves.
In my frenzy to get things done, I overreach myself. I attack the deadly dullness of the countryside, I attack the abuses in a school curriculum. I even oppose the current morality of the age and instead of doing good I do active harm. I don't stop to think how my opinions will be construed.
I wish some of those who look on me as a dangerous innovator could see me in form. I am sure that no one could take exception to my statements there. My whole gospel is all of a piece. "Lukewarmness" is the unforgivable sin: one must be an active agent and ally oneself on the side of God or mammon. There is no halting between two opinions: if weaccept (as we must) one or the other so must we fight for that side tooth and nail. The Holy Ghost, the Divine Spark, conscience, call it what you will that inspires men on to courageous, unselfish, heroic acts and thoughts, dies unless it is nurtured and carefully looked after. That is the lesson I impress on my boys in all the lessons where I get a chance of talking. On Sunday and Monday mornings I comment on all the books I have read during the week, drawing some lesson of life for their guidance. He only is the true teacher who is not afraid to teach, to explain the difficulties of life, his own shortcomings and attempts to find the light. One must be honest to deal fairly with boys.
I spend my time now in bicycling down to school after breakfast, teaching all the morning, writing articles all the afternoon with an occasional variant by walking down to the town with Elspeth, teaching from 4.15 to 6, and then coming home and writing until 10 and so to bed. In this way the days slip past at incredible speed. We seem to be in another world from the war: our only reminders are gigantic catastrophes, big successes, old boys returning scarred and maimed; telephonic communications plastered in the local bookseller's window, wounded soldiers, Belgian refugees, and occasional lectures. Common Room conversation has changed. The talk now during "break" is nearly always on the news of the day and very gloomy are the predictions made, especially by our older men, who are very hard hit by the horror of it and age perceptibly between one term and another. The debating societies flourish as they never did before, boys seem to be working harder, games are relegated to a secondary place in theestimation of the school and we seem to have settled down with grim determination to see it through.
I have lately been lecturing to the Girls' School and in London on Rupert Brooke. He is a poet exactly after my own heart. He is clever, witty, honest, and tries to find a meaning in life. He strains after Beauty but is not afraid of Ugliness: he is in love with the material, the tangible joys of life, but is not afraid of probing into the unseen world and guessing at what lies behind the darkness.
I have had the great good fortune to have two books published this autumn, one a school textbook, the other a series of sketches of English country life reprinted from the magazines. The sense of authorship gives me tremendous pleasure and the letters I get of adverse and commendatory criticism do me good. I would rather write a real book that mattered, something to inspire and cheer people up and show them a path through the labyrinth of life than anything else in the world. Pray God I may live long enough to do that.
The days of quarrels and struggles for supremacy between Elspeth and myself are over. She is extraordinarily patient with me and I do my level best not to give her cause for offence. When either of us shows signs of a relapse, the other immediately climbs down and gives in at once. I am as happy as it is possible for man to be. Some half-dozen boys come up to my house regularly and talk "bookish shop" and show up literary compositions of wonderful insight and value. I am making more and more friends in the school.
Coningsby is perhaps my closest friend: he is the Tony of Marlton: he chafes at the routine and rulesand finds an avenue of escape in literature: he is also a born poet. He has a true sense of beauty and is learning to discipline himself by imitating the metres of all the older poets. I am trying to teach him the necessity of discipline, reticence and restraint in writing as in life, but I find it very hard owing to my own inability to conform in one or the other.
I take him with me to the University Extension Lectures on the modern poets and to the frequent concerts given in the town by Plunket Greene, Gervase Elwes, the London String Quartette, the Westminster Glee Singers and other celebrities that come down here.
One thing which has brought out the latent talent and interesting side of a number of boys has been a performance ofTwelfth Night, which one of the House-masters got up in aid of charity. Boys love acting and to meet them day after day at rehearsals brought us all into much closer contact than we were before.
Boys think far more deeply than they used to. They grow much more quickly to maturity than they were wont. In one way one misses the careless irresponsibility: it kept one eternally young to be always with youth, but now, partly owing to the fact that all the senior boys work in the holidays in munition factories or on farms, the whole school is much more "grown up" in spite of the fact that the average age is much lower.
January 17, 1916
Elspeth and I spent Christmas in Bath and I tried to write without much success, so we decided to go to Bournemouth, where we stayed for three weeks and enjoyed every minute of it. By a strange chance wemet at least half a dozen people who were with us in Scotland in the summer.
We walked about the cliffs trying to get strong and went to many entertainments and read a great many novels. We joined in at nights with the hotel people in their amusements, which did us both good and went a long way to remove the depression of the times.
I still go up to London every week to see my specialist. I am gradually getting quieter, though there are moments when my restlessness drives me to do crazy things. There are hardly any old Radcastrians of my time left. Two masters are back maimed for life, one armless, and the other without a right leg. The other young ones are all killed. Stapleton has given up his living and is working on a farm: Montague and Jimmy Haye keep on coming and going from and to France. Both have been wounded once, but they seem to bear charmed lives. They always spent some part of their leave with us at Marlton. They live for getting somewhere where it is really quiet and there is no reminder of the war.
April 3, 1916
It is strange to walk through the streets of Marlton and hear working-men talking of Salonika, Gallipoli, Mesopotamia, and India in the most casual way as if they were all villages within easy walking distances. The postmen, porters, and farm labourers are beginning to come back, having been invalided out of the services. All of them are full of wonderful exploits and make us poor stay-at-homes feel out of it and useless. The term has passed quietly. I have beentold by the Head Master that my writings do not altogether please my colleagues, that I do not temper my enthusiasm with sufficient discretion or think long enough before I commit myself to a judgment. I have been too much obsessed with my theory that the intellectual and æsthetic faculties should be cultivated before the others to see the dangerous side of my tenets. I hate upsetting the masters here because some of them have been very long-suffering with my madness. I am certainly extremely unpopular because, like Feste, "I am comptible, even to the least sinister usage." Under my mask I am abnormally sensitive. I hate making enemies. I want to be every man's friend. I almost deceive myself into thinking that I am, then in an unguarded moment I flaunt an opinion which disgusts the conventional; in my horror of ignorance and dullness I make sweeping generalizations about people who live in the country and I somewhat naturally have the whole hive about my ears. Who am I, forsooth, to talk of ignorance and dullness? Why should I set myself up as a pinnacle of light? I don't: it's just because I am striving so hard to escape from the slough that I seek to drag out others with me, a foolish, quixotic act.