PART ICATERPILLARBLINDNESSPART I—CATERPILLARLAUGHDiary of John Haye, Secretary to the Noat Art Society, and in J. W. P.’s House at the Public School of Noat.6 July (about).IThas only just struck me that a kind of informal diary would be rather fun. No driving as to putting down something every day, just a sort of pipe to draw off the swamp water. It has rained all the past week. We went to Henley yesterday and it was wretched: B. G. going off to Phyllis Court and leaving me with Jonson, an insufferable bore who means very well and consequently makes things much worse. Seymour went with Dore who was dressed in what would be bad form at Monte, and at Henley . . . Had a row with Seymour and refused to be seen with Dore.Wonderful T. Carlyle’s letters are, and his wife’s too. One can always tell them at a glance. She is the best letter writer there has ever been, I am told by a modern authority. I should think T. C. runsthis pretty fine, his explosive style going well into letters.9 July.Two people in my absence just had a water fight in my room, which enraged me.The usual question asked, “Why not in anyone else’s room?” and of course no answer: however, felt better after calling Brimston an animated cabbage. His retort was, “Oh, cutting!” . . .Seymour, B. G. and I were seriously discussing the production of a revue here next term, as they do at the universities, but as Seymour said, the difficulties were insuperable, too many old men to surmount.19 July.Walk with Seymour to-day, who was very charming. Fell in love with a transparent tortoiseshell cigarette case for three guineas, very cheap I thought. He keeps his band of satellites in very good order. When he told them to leave the School Shop they did. They positively worship him. He is an extraordinary creature, I don’t believe he could get on without them: keeping them as some people keep a dog, to let off steam at. A rift between Harington Brown and Seymour, very amusing to watch: H. B. much the same as Seymour but lacks his charm. Seymour furious because H. B. has brought out a bad magazine calledThe Shop Window.Seymour thinks it is a challenge to his preciousNoat Lights.If it is one it is a failure.Dicky Maitland, who used to try and teach me science, has been writing to the Adjer to say that my Volunteer’s uniform is always untidy; the Adjer says he has had several notes: did you ever hear such cheek? But then the poor man is a military maniac.As a matter of fact I ought to look quite well to-morrow on the occasion of the Yearly Inspection, as my tunic is nothing but oil stains, and everything else is sketchy and insecure.J. W. P. told me last night that I was a person who wanted to fail at Noat and who thought (and only he knew how mistakenly) that he was going to be a success in after-life. A typically House-masterish thing to say. But then he was in a bad temper.Later.—Have just announced that I go to the dentist to-morrow so shan’t be able to play in the House match that afternoon: frenzy; “I call that rather a shame,” etc. Isn’t it funny what a good player one becomes on a sudden?The dentist to-morrow will be the third time he has tried to kill a nerve, and it isn’t nearly dead now, but still fairly active.Tremendous excitement over Hutchinson’s coming novel, everyone trying to get a first edition.Thursday.Corps Inspection: all went well.Afterwards I went up to the dentist, and in thetrain met Mayo, who is leaving early. Had a long talk mainly about Seymour and Co. As might be expected he did not like him, but what was more to the point, produced a most interesting reason and unanswerable to a person who holds views like his. Firstly, then, he has no use for a person who is no good at anything. He tolerates the clever scholar, he tolerates the half-wit athlete, but since he cannot see that any of us are remotely even one of these, he cannot bear us as a set.What adds fuel to his fire is a person who glories in his eccentricity, which of course is true of all of us, in that we glory in ourselves. And of course the inevitable immorality touched on, which is always connected with eccentricities.B. G. of course he merely regards as really and actively evil, and I don’t blame him as he does not know B. G., whose appearance is well calculated to sow the seeds of doubt and dislike in any righteous person. Furthermore, he can’t see what good any of us are going to do in after-life. He said that he was going into the army, he trumpeted that, and then because we were alone together he put me out of the argument by saying that I should be a future financier.I could not answer him, there was nothing further to say, but in the course of the running fire that we kept up afterwards just to show that there was no ill-feeling, he actually said that Seymour went up in his estimation because he had won hisHouse hundred yards. Extraordinary! Very interesting, and, of course, a view which is almost incredible to me, in fact a great eye-opener.Had to return in a hurry from the dentist who has given up trying to kill the nerve in my tooth. He prophesied what he called a “sting” in it to-night: he under-estimated it considerably. It is hurting damnably.21 July.Am reading a very good book on the Second Empire with Napoleon the Third. It is in the Lytton Strachey style, which after Carlyle’s is, I think, the most amusing.The Volunteers’ Camp and all its attendant horrors is getting quite close now: though I could get off whenever I wanted to with my hammer-toes, but I want to go just for once.22 July.Bell’s, across the way, have bought as many as seven hunting-horns. Each possessor blows it unceasingly, just when one wants to read. They don’t do it all together, but take it in turns to keep up one forced note. Really, it might be Eton. They can only produce the one note during the whole day.In addition to this trifling detail, it is “the thing to do” now to throw stones at me as I sit at my window. However, I have just called E. N. a “milch cow,” and shall on the first opportunity call D. J. B. a “bovine goat,” which generally relievesmatters. These epithets have the real authentic Noat Art Society touch, haven’t they?24 July.No Art Society this evening. No one turned up except H. B., who was to have read a paper; he was rather hurt. However, I think it will be all right, he has about as much admiration for the satellites as I have.Am too tired to do anything but write this. The House rather alarmed and faintly contemptuous to hear I keep this; they have given me up, I think and hope. Rather a funny thing happened while fielding this afternoon. I had thrown myself down to stop a ball and I saw waving specks in my eyes for two minutes afterwards. I suppose my blood pressure was disturbed.“For those in danger on the sea” is at the moment being sung by Truin’s at House prayers.26 July.J. W. P. came in last night to say that I had bad reports, everyone saying that I took no trouble, which is not surprising on both sides of the question: says that next term I shall have to do all my work in his study with the half-wits, a song which I have heard before, I think, though it is so encouraging coming at the end of a term’s boredom.Camp at Tidworth will be delightful in this soaking weather.27 July.Have bought the most gorgeous sun hat for a horse in straw for sixpence, and have painted it in concentric rings. Shall wear it at Camp, and have fixed it up so that it will bend when worn like a very old-fashioned bonnet. In the ear-holes I am going to put violently swearing colours, orange and magenta, in ribbon I got for nothing by being nice to a shopwoman at Bowlay’s. Our little John is getting on, isn’t he?The hat is a masterpiece, and being so has, of course, started a violent controversy. Those who consider it merely bounderism, and those who think it amusing, talk very seriously together and stop when I approach, while the faithful come in occasionally to tell me what the others have said.The most beautiful letter ever written is undoubtedly that of Charlotte Brontë’s on her sister Emily’s death.28 July.No more work till the summer holidays. Have been relegated by the House selection committee to the dud tent at Camp, which amuses me vastly. Apparently those who manage the affairs of the tent prefer Bulwer and Maston to myself; more amusing still. Shall I get elected into the Reading Room next term? Probably not. I think as a matter of fact they want a mobbing tent which they know I would not join in, anyhow I shall be muchmore comfortable as I am: at any rate that reads better, and sounds so for that matter.Apparently I shall get attacked if I wear my straw hat, a fact I can hardly believe. I have hadthemost heated arguments as to why I should not wear fancy dress; the fact remains that people are more prim and hidebound there than here, except that, as far as I can see, all and sundry combine to be rude to other schools.29 July.A sing-song in the Hall to-night, to which everyone but myself has gone: didn’t go for two reasons; first, because the cinema part of it was certain to be lamentable; secondly, Fryer irks me when he sings songs, and the applause he gets, for no other reason than that he is everything at games, and so is profitable to applaud, maddens me.What is bad is that this school tends to turn the really clever into people who pretend for all they are worth to be the mediocrities which are the personification of the splendid manhood phrase. And in the end these poor people succeed and lose all the brains they ever had, which is distressing, particularly for me who could do with a few more.Sunday.Sing-song apparently a great success. There is an auction going on now, everything that has been handed down through the ages is being resold. I suppose some pictures have seen about forty auctions:the commonest are Thorburn’s petrified partridges, or worse still, those most weird and antiquated pictures of horse-racing, the horse’s neck being the length of its body.Social ostracism which I am experiencing now for the first time for many terms is really incredibly funny. It begins with a studied vagueness when you address anyone, which means that he is frightened at being seen talking to you: it goes on, in direct ratio to the number of jaws they have about you, to a studied rudeness, and the lower and younger you are the more your room is mobbed. And then the whole thing blows over you on to some other unfortunate.I suppose I have been rather tiresome lately, but all except T. D. and possibly E. N. are so distressingly the athletic type, who sink their whole beings in the school and its affairs, and are blind and almost ignorant of any world outside their own.31 July.The last flourish before Camp.My room is a sight for the gods, piles and stacks of clothing to be packed, a bulging pot-bellied kit-bag filled with changes of clothing for the ten days’ horror, everything upside down, and over all the frenzied maid as near suicide as she ever gets: her chief job is to look for lost garments, and as she regards me with the deepest suspicion over a pair of tennis shoes, I am not left long alone. The stormin the Chinese tea-service has died down, and once more I am anchored precariously outside the haven of the barely tolerated.I hear that the only hotel where one can get a bath in Camp has been put out of bounds, which is delightful. How furious Mamma will be: apparently the reason is that people used to drink there.In Camp: 2 August.Just a scrawl. It has been raining viciously as if with a purpose. At the moment I am lying on what is affectionately known as a “palliarse.” Underneath is deal planking. Underneath that is a torrent as we are on a hill and the accumulated effects of two days’ rain are flowing beneath. Above is a bell tent, long since condemned by the army authorities as unsound, so that the cloudburst which is pouring from Heaven penetrates freely. There is one spot under which lies Brown, the world’s greatest grouser, and it is appropriately threadbare. He was foolish enough to put soap on it; we had told him that if you soaped a bit of cloth it became waterproof, and now soapsuds drip down on to his face. We have also told him that his grousing is intolerable, and will be dealt with unless he suppresses it, so that he lies in a misery too deep for words, and is the only thing that keeps us happy.There are, of course, rumours about our going home on account of the wet, but such a good thing could not possibly happen.The food and the smell of grease in the eating tent are both very foul. The smell I was warned against by an old campaigner. Thank God my turn has not yet come for washing up, but I shall have to do it to-morrow. They are thinking themselves the most awful devils in the next tent with a bottle of port; perhaps if I had one I should feel one too.Holidays: 11 August.The village fête here yesterday, and after a three forty-five awakening,reveilleor whatever you like to call it, at Tidworth, I had to run about here when I arrived and be officious to all and sundry. An awful thing happened. It was towards the end when I was so tired I could hardly see. Mamma told me to go and find the young lady who ran the Clock Golf Competition and tell her to send in the names of the prize-winners. The young ladies who ran things were all surprisingly alike, disastrously so, and there were many of them. I went up to a girl I was sure had run the Clock Golf, and I asked her if she had done so. No answer. Again I asked, and again no answer. Somehow I felt only more sure from her silence that she had run it, so I asked her yet again, and more eagerly. There was no answer, but there came a blush like a banner which rallied all her friends to her, to protect her from the depredations of this young man. After that I hid myself in the house. I know what the neighbourhood will make of my reputation now. Mammalaughed; I have never heard her laugh so much before.I have got the most vile and horrid “bedabbly” cold—Carlyle again. Had one or two highbrow talks with Seymour in the small canteen with two cubic feet air-space for each savage human, which was rather wonderful.29 August.I fished to-day and “killed” two tiddlers, one was a minnow, and such a small one at that that I thought it too infinitesimal even for the stable cat. That was a record broken, if in the wrong direction.Mamma to-night on religion. What effect it had, and how far it went, at Noat? They are effectively stifling mine.During dinner I saw a man run across the bottom of the garden, so when it was over I took the dogs, and with an eye to theatrical effect I put the bulldog on a leash, and led him snorting, pulling, panting and roaring round the garden. He made just the noise, on a minor scale, that one is led to believe a dragon made. William waited with Father’s revolver loaded with blank, awaiting a scream from me if I was attacked. He looked too ludicrous, with a paternal smile on his face.2 September.To my mind there is nothing so thrilling as the rushing, hungry rise the chub have here; it makes me tingle even now to think of it, and the morespectators on the bank watching, after you have hooked your fish, the better.At the present Mamma is in a great state over someone on the Town Council of Norbury. After swearing me to secrecy she told me all about it, and I have forgotten. But the main thing is that she has her suspicions only and no proof, but that, of course, only makes her more sure. But she had a splendid speech in the middle about dishonesty on town councils when she was at her best. But I wish she would not take these things so seriously. She expects me to too, and when I don’t, she says, “Ah! you are too young, John dear.”9 September.Mamma not sleeping, so Ruffles, the chow, passed the night in my room, which he disliked intensely, so much so that when he did eventually doze off distrustfully, he had what is a rare thing with him, a nightmare of the most alarming and noisy order. I hope this Town Council business is not really keeping Mamma awake. Probably the wretched devil is quite innocent. It would be quite like Mamma to go up to him and accuse him of it. But then she couldn’t.Caught seven fish yesterday, which wasn’t so bad. They were rising well.NOAT, Friday, 29 September.Back to the old place again, and very depressed in consequence: however, I am now a full-blown specialistin history, and am allowed to send small boys on errands as I am one of the illustrious first hundred in the school. But the football is going to be awful.I came back on Wednesday. As usual, nothing is changed in the least: Bell’s opposite have discarded their hunting-horns of accursed memory for an accordion and a banjo, just as painful.What with the accordion and the cold and the noise and the discomfort and Cole, who I am up to in history, this has ceased to be a life and has become a mere existence. However, the outlook is always black at the beginning of the term.Later.—An excellent meeting of the Art Society: very amusing. There was a grand encounter between Seymour and Harington Brown and B. G.’s unrivalled powers of invective were used with great effect. His face, his voice, everything combines to make him a most formidable opponent in wordy warfare.1 October.Since all my contemporaries spend all their time in the Senior Reading Room with a newly-acquired gramophone, I am left alone and undisturbed, which is very pleasant. Am feeling much more cheerful now, which I attribute to a cup of hot tea.Am keeping up all the tradition by being the only person in the school with a greatcoat on. Why is it that when there is the hardest and most bitter frost no one wears a greatcoat here? I think it is so absurd,and get rewarded for my pains by catching reproving glances from the new boys, who, of course, are ultra careful, so much as to say, “You are making an ass of yourself with that coat on.”Seymour and B. G. are going to givethemost immense and splendiferous leaving party, which is going to be wild fun.3 October.This morning an outrage: I am eating my morning bun, given to me for that purpose by J. W. P., when my tooth meets a stone, and half of it is broken off clean. Result, an immense jagged cavity which I shall have filled, at J. W. P.’s expense, with platinum, and set with brilliants. I am furious.Brown, a friend of mine, has hit Billing, who keeps the food shop where you get rat poison, in the stomach so that he crumpled up behind the counter: the best thing that has happened for years.Billing had apparently hit Brown previously, and had sent him to the Headmaster for being rude, and he, instead of backing Billing up, had asked Brown why he had not hit him back: so when Billing hit Rockfeller to-day, Rockfeller being with Brown, Brown was rude to Billing, who attacked Brown, who laid Billing out. Meanwhile Brown has gone to his House master to ask that Billing’s shop may be put out of bounds, and Billing presumably is going to the Headmaster. There will be a fine flare-up.6 October.Rejoice, O land! My director on seeing my first essay, and a bad one at that, tells me I ought to do well with my writing. What fun it would be if I could write! I see myself as the English Anatole France, a vista of glory . . . superb!I have fallen hopelessly in love with the ties in Bartlett’s window. I shall have to buy them all, even though they are quite outrageous: the most cunning, subtle and violent checks imaginable.Sunday, 8 October.This morning we had a howling dervish of a missioner who comes once a year. All his ghastly stories were there and his awful metaphors and his incredible requests. In this morning’s sermon he asked us to give his mission a vision; last time it was that we should pray for it, and before that, that we should give up our holidays to work there. To-day we were told that even cabbages had visions, and God knows what else. He was upset by our laughing at him and he broke down several times, Chris crowning himself with glory by going out in the middle of the man’s discourse clasping a pink handkerchief to his nose which he said was bleeding. Really the pulpit is no place for self-revelation, but I am afraid the man has not learnt it yet.9 October.Two youths have been insolent to me in the Music Schools. Am I considered the school idiot? If soI am not surprised; any way I was most polite to them—next time measures will be taken. The best way with these people is to ask them their names; it generally shuts them up. I believe my appearance is too weak; I shall have to grow mustachios. I am always the person the lost Asiatic asks his way from, and French come to me as fly to fly-paper, ditto the hysterical matron. Such is fame.12 October.Guy Denver tells me the following: It is extremely cold, and he and Conway are walking together. Says Conway, “God, I am cold!” Guy: “Then why don’t you wear an overcoat?” “Oh! then I should be classed with the John Haye and Ben Gore lot.” That is what the fear of popular opinion drives the ordinary Public Schoolboy to; that sort of thing is constantly recurring like the plague.15 October.This afternoon a delicious six-mile walk with B. G. The weather was perfect, a warm sun and everything misty, with “the distances very distant,” as Kipling puts it. Though we did not rock the world with our utterances, it was very enjoyable indeed.20 October.Greene has ordered several chickens’ heads, lights, etc., to be sent up to White, which we hope will be a nice surprise. It is rather a good idea.Have been painting a portrait of Napoleon, cubistand about three foot square, with B. G., who has got it as a punishment from a new master. He will soon lose that most refreshing originality. Moreover he said that B. G. was not to do anything comic, which showed that he was already beginning to lose it. It just depends how much the others have instilled into him to see his manner of receiving our glaring monstrosity.New phrase I have invented: “To play Keating’s to someone else’s beetle.” Used with great success on Seymour who is enraged by it.21 October.This morning, so I am told, Seymour and B. G. dragged a toy tin motor car along the pavement on the end of a string. How I wish I had been there: it is quite unprecedented, and seems to have outraged the dignity of the whole school, which is excellent.Seymour created another sensation by quoting his own poetry for to-day’s saying lesson, which caused much amusement. Everyone who matters athletically now thinks it is the thing to do to know Seymour, which is intensely funny, and into the bargain I feel I get a little reflected glory when I walk with him down the street. The Captain of the Rugger smiled at me the other day. I nearly spat in his face (but of course I really smiled my nicest).Have written to several artists to ask them to talk to the Society. When we founded it we put in therules that we must get men down to speak to it; it is the only way of keeping the thing alive. And I think if we can get someone down the Society will recover from its present rather dicky condition.25 October.Have just had a letter from the biggest swell I wrote to, saying that he will come down to the Society on 14 November. It really is too splendid: he is the most flaming tip-top swell who has written thousands of books, as well as his drawings, which are very well known indeed. All these people are so nice and encouraging about the Society, which is splendid.31 October.I am seventeen now—quite aged.Last night was the gala invitation night of the Society, and was animmensesuccess, where I had secretly feared failure.All those invited came—all the boys, all the masters, and all to-day I have been hearing nothing but how pleased and interested they were. It was on Post-Impressionism, a subject which had the merit of being one which the Society knew more about than anyone else present. B. G. made the most gorgeous speech of pure invective which enthralled everyone. The Society is now positively booming, even T. R. C. having thawed into enthusiasm. I think it is a permanency now.Fires on alternate nights now, which isn’t so very,very bad, and the weather is slowly improving. Extraordinary how the weather affects my spirits. I had a telegram from Mamma who had remembered my birthday, which is splendid, for somehow I hate its being forgotten. She never remembers till Nan reminds her. But the football, it is enough to kill one.Would you believe it—but J. W. P. gave me a long jaw on the “hopelessness” of my having a bad circulation, because I habitually wore a sweater underneath my waistcoat: It’s a filthy habit, I know, but he drives one on to it with his allowance of fires, and then he tries to blame one: it is an outrage.1 November.It is freezing again, bad luck to it.B. G. and I in the morning went up to Windsor and got some electioneering pamphlets from the Committee Rooms, and have posted them all over Noat, including the Volunteers’ Notice Board and the School Office and the Library. Later I put them up all over the House notice boards, which scored a glorious rise out of “those that matter.” These people are really too terribly stodgy; they have no sense of humour, though they did faintly appreciate the pamphlet on the maids’ door which said that Socialism was bent on doing away with marriage.This afternoon I had to read fifty pages of mediæval history, which has left my brain reeling andhelpless: it is too absurd making one learn all about these fool Goths and Vandals: they ceased to count in practical politics some time ago now, so why revive them?11 November.Have just conceived the idea of having a gallery of all the people I loathe most at Noat to be pasted up on the door of my room, which has been denuded of the rules of the Art Society since I spent a frenzied afternoon changing the room slightly.Smith, the master, crosses his cheques with a ruler. One comes across something amazing every day here.This is the coldest day I have ever met at Noat, and a very thick fog thrown in, greatly conducive to misery, but strangely enough I am most cheerful, having written a tale calledSonny, which is by far the best I have done so far.15 November.Quite the most wonderful day of my life. It was polling day, so after two o’clock (a saying lesson so we got out early), B. G., Seymour and I went to Strand caparisoned all over with Conservative blue and with enormous posters.When we reached Strand, we found all the Socialist working-men-God-bless-them drawn up in rows on either side of the street, so we three went down the rows haranguing. We each got into the centre of groups, and expected to be killed at any moment,for there is something about me that makes that type see red. However, they contained themselves very nicely while we talked nonsense at them.Then we went to the station and got a cab, and with B. G. on the box and Seymour and I behind we set off, B. G. with posters stuck through his umbrella, and dead white from excitement. We went by the byways shouting and screaming till we came to the top of the High Street. We then turned down this; by this time all of us were worked up and quite mad, and eventually came to the Cross again, where we passed the Socialists who were collected in a meeting. They cheered and hooted, and we went round the same way only shorter, and after going down the High Street, turned down towards Noat, where we soon picked up six or so Noatians. With them we returned, some running, with a rattle making a deafening din. We passed the Labour and Socialist meeting on the “Out” road of the railway station, and went over the railway bridge, where we paid off the cab. We then returned in a body past the meeting, which broke up and followed across the cross-roads, pelting us with rolled-up rags, etc. Then at the corner of the road to Noat we formed a meeting. I was terrified at moments, and wildly exhilarated the rest. The meeting lasted twenty minutes, questions being asked the whole time. B. G. did most of the speaking; Seymour and I did a little too. Woodville harangued the women; he was very good with them. They had their spokesman,an old labourer, very tub-thumpy, and the whole of this part of the entertainment is a blur. Looking round in the middle of it I saw that all the Conservative men and women were formed up behind us, which was touching. All this time messages were coming from the fellows on the outside that the people there were talking lovingly of murder (on us), and matters did look very nasty at one time, but it worked off. The police came at the end with an inspector and marched us off, I shaking every man’s hand that I could see. So we returned shouting madly. It was too wonderful; never to be forgotten.16 November.I now understand why men were brave in the war; it was because they were afraid of being cowards, that fear overcoming that of death. The crowd in Strand and having to go back into it again and have things thrown at one—it was terrifying at first for so great a coward as myself, but great fun when one got hotted up. The women were by far the worst. One old beldame screamed: “You dirty tykes, you dirty tykes!” continuously.Later.—Another wonderful time. I went with Seymour up to the market-place of the town of Noat, outside the Town Rooms, and there we had another stormy meeting. I talked a very great deal this time; Bronsill and I went on the whole time to rather an excited crowd. Then he and I were dragged off and put on a balcony where the Pressphotographed us, and he addressed the crowd and I prompted him and hear-heared, etc. I would have spoken had there been time, but lunch arrived and we departed. It was too wonderful; it is tremendous fun being above a crowd, about 150 this time, and I wasn’t a bit nervous. Nor was I terrified when the crowd became nasty again as on the previous day; it is the most exhilarating thing I know—far better than hunting. Meanwhile, a master saw me and J. W. P. knows. What will happen?17 November.Nothing happened with J. W. P.; he didn’t mind, and was vastly amused.Have written another story all about blood; not impossibly bad but sadly mediocre. If only I could write! But I think I improve. Those terrible, involved sentences of mine are my undoing.Fox was pleased at my admiring Carlyle.18 November.Harington Brown asked me for an MS. for the magazine he is producing: gave himSonny, but don’t suppose it will be suitable, though I am sure it has some worth. The thing is only about 1400 words, and when he refuses it I am going to send it up to some London magazine which will take very short stories, and at present I don’t know of one.I rather hope that H. B. won’t accept the thing. The ephemerals are always putrescent, and nobodywith any sense reads them. There have been about three editions of it so far, one a term.19 November, after lunch.Have been accepted by H. B., with mixed feelings on my part. However, his thing is a cut above the usual ephemeral and is quite sensible, but there is a sense of degradation attached to appearing in print. But I hope this means that I can write; it’s not bad work as I’m only just seventeen. Perhaps it is too good, and I shan’t do anything again.Carlyle’s flight to Varennes in hisRevolutionis almost too painful to read, so exciting is it to me. It is all untrue, of course, they did not go half as slow as he would make out, nevertheless it is superb.Thank God there are only a few more weeks of this football.*****NOAT, 26 January.What a long interval, and what a very little has happened! The holidays were enlivened by two deaths in the village, which much excited Mamma, and one or two scandals in the neighbourhood, which she followed carefully without taking up sides.The bulldog died, which was very sad; he was such a dear old thing. Mamma was very much upset about that too, in her funny way. She seems to spend more and more time in the village now,and to see less and less people. One comes back here looking forward to the fullness of the place.We came back yesterday, and I feel absolutely lost without B. G. and Seymour, who have both left. They do make a gap, for we three understood each other, and we ladled out sympathy to each other when life became too black. And now I am alone, in a hornets’ nest of rabid footballers.At the moment I am reading Gogol’sDead Souls.His word-pictures are superb: better than Ruskin’s or Carlyle’s, and his style is so terse and clean-cut, at least it is in the translation, but it shines through that. I am an absolute slave. I shall keep this book for ever by me if I have enough cash to buy it with. He is wonderful.He is at his best, I think, in description; I have met nothing like it. Almost he ousts Carlyle; not quite, though. He is a poet through and through.29 January.But surely this is most beautiful:The trills of a lark fall drop by drop down an unseen aery ladder, and the calls of the cranes, floating by in a long string, like the ringing notes of silver bugles, resound in the void of melodiously vibrating ether.He is a poet: and his book is in very truth a poem. It is Gogol.30 January.Am reading Winston Churchill’s biography of his father, which is very wonderful.I hardly remember B. G. as having existed now. That doesn’t mean to say that I don’t answer his letters, but life goes on much the same.Did I say that I had become the budding author at home? No, I think not. I have written in all three things, so that I am hailed as a Napoleon of literature. Such is fame. I only wish I deserved these eulogies, and must set seriously to work soon. Mrs. Conder most of all seems impressed. Talks at tea of nothing but where she can take me to get “copy”—which means Brighton, I suppose; not that horrid things don’t happen there, though. But she is the limit. Since Conder died she has blossomed. At least, when he was alive, one could make allowances for her, because he was so foul, but now there is nothing to say. She is sogay, sodevilish gay!But all this is very untrue, unkind and ungrateful. In all she has given me £5 in tips, and a cookery book for Boy Scouts.17 February.In a moment of rash exuberance I bought a cigarette-holder about eight inches long. Have been smoking it all the afternoon. Caused quite a sensation in the middle-class atmosphere of the tea shopchezBeryl.Am delivering an oration to the Arts Society on Japanese Art. I am going to speak it and not read it, which is bravery carried to foolhardiness. But it is good to get a little practice in speaking.22 February.Just been to dinner with the Headmaster. I was put next him and occupied his ear for twenty minutes. In the course of that time I managed to ask for a theatre for the school to act in, and for a school restaurant where one could get a decent British steak with onions, and, if possible, with beer. I also advanced arguments in favour of this. The only thing we agreed on was the sinfulness of having a window open. He listened to it all, which was very good of him.On Monday I got off my speech on Japanese Art all right, I think, save for the very beginning, which was shaky to a point of collapse. To-morrow I go to tea with Harington Brown. Meanwhile at the tea Dore gave me we arranged that the Art Society should give a marionette show. The authorities agreed the next day and gave us the Studio. Someone is busy writing the scenario, about lovers thwarted whose names end inio.Then we shall paint scenery. It will be such fun. Of course the figures will be stationary.The only modern Germans who could paint are Lembach and Boechel.24 February.Had tea with H. B. I have sent him a story for this term’sNoat Days.It won’t be accepted, I suppose. It is an experiment in short sentences. He read me the libretto of the marionettes as far as hehad got, and it really was remarkably good. He is producing it in his ephemeral.10 March.This morning occurred one of those incidents which render school life at moments unbearable to such as myself. I was raising a spoonful of the watered porridge that they see fit to choke us with, when someone jerked my arm——The puerility of it all, yet the wit which I, for my years, should enjoy according to nature. Of course there was a foul mess, as of one who had vomited, mostly over me. However, it only took an hour or so to regain my equanimity. Incidentally I had a little ink-throwing exhibition in the fool’s room. I had always wanted to see the exact effect of throwing a paint brush at the wall to appreciate Ruskin’s criticism. It was most interesting.Later.—What an odious superior fellow I am now! It is my mood to-night. Sometimes I think it is better to be just what one is, and not be everlastingly apologising for oneself in so many words. To be rude when you want to be rude—and how very much nicer it would make you when you wanted to be nice. I am sure it is all a matter of relative thought. You think you are working hard by your standards, and to another man you don’t seem to be working at all. Don’t you work just as hard as the other really? Because, after all, it is only a mental question. I shall expound this to J. W. P. I have already done so to Gale with rathermarked success. It is a very good principle at Noat.11 March.I wish the world was not so ugly and unhappy. And there is so much cynicism. And why does Science label and ticket everything so that the world is like a shop, with their price on all the articles? There are still a few auction rooms where people bid for what they think most worth while, but they are getting fewer and fewer. And people love money so, and I shall too I expect when I have got out of what our elders tell me is youthful introspection. But why shouldn’t one go through something which is so alive and beautiful as that. But they only say, smiling, “Yes; I went through all that once; you will soon get over that.” I shall fight for money and ruin others. Down with Science. Romanticism, all spiritual greatness is going. Soon music will be composed by scientific formulæ; painting has been in France, and look how photography has put art back. Oh, for a Carlyle now! Some prophet one could follow.15 March.Spent a whole afternoon at work on the marionette stage. I carpentered while E. V. C. tinkered up the scenes he has painted. Between us we got through surprisingly little in a surprisingly long time.My story in the newNoat Dayswill appear shortly. I read the proofs of the story at extremespeed and thought I had never read anything worse or feebler. The paltry humour sickened me, though the end did seem to have some kick in it.19 March.The marionette show becomes more and more hectic. One hardly has time to breathe. There is a performance on Saturday: the day after the day after to-morrow. Nothing done, of course, and the Studio a scene of hysterical budding artists, mad enough in private life, but when under the influence of so strong and so public an emotion surpass themselves in do-nothing-with-the-most-possible-noise-and-trouble.1 April.The marionette play continues to be an immense pleasure. We give a children’s performance to-morrow at three. Answers from mothers pour in: I am afraid it may be too full. How well do little children see? They are soverylow down when they sit. I think the life of a stage manager must be one of the most trying on this earth.Good Friday.On a Pretty Woman, “And that infantile fresh air of hers” (from Browning).“If you take a photograph of a man digging, in my opinion he is sure to look as if he were not digging” (Van Gogh). Have been reading Van Gogh’s letters. They are the hardest things I have ever taken on. He is so very much in earnest, and sovery difficult to understand. I think I have got a good deal of what he means.A wonderful postcard from B. G. in Venice:We are here till Thursday, wondering who has won the Boat Race, the National, the Junior School Quarter-Mile and the Hammersmith Dancing Record.Read a little Carlyle to a few of the House. What else could it be but incomprehensible to them? “Mad,” they called it. Anything of genius is “mad” in a Public School. And rightly so, I suppose.4 April.One day more to the end of the term. How nice it will be to be back, to start life again for a day or two. The holidays are disgustingly short, though, only three weeks and a bit.We have just given our third and last performance of the marionette play. It has been a wild success and should, if possible, be repeated. But the light in the summer would be too strong and everyone leaves at the end of next summer, so I don’t suppose we shall have enough people to get one up next winter!Oh, for to-morrow to go quickly.Holidays: 10 April.Back again to peace, even if it is cotton wool and stagnation, but very pleasant all the same. Am reading George Moore’sAve, with considerable relish and amusement. He is so very witty.My reports have come in and are uninteresting;no one very enthusiastic, which is not to be wondered at.20 April.“Polygamy is a matter of opinion, not of morality.” Montague Glass is undoubtedly the greatest comedian of letters.Potash and Perlmutteris superb.At dinner to-night Mamma informed me in one of her rare pronouncements on myself, that I always kept people at arm’s length. It sounds an awful thing to write, but I seldom meet anyone who interests me more than myself: my own fault, I suppose.We have acquired a gramophone, and Strauss’ “Last Waltz” has bewitched me. It is such a lovely thing.NOAT, 4 May.Back to it again: good old Noat, bloody place! Have just seen a book entitledUp Against it in the Desert, which sufficiently describes my feelings at the moment.It is so hot as to make writing impossible as my pen and style testify. I shall play no cricket this term, but will just read. I can get off the cricket on the score of health, which becomes increasingly bad. Last holidays we went from doctor to doctor. They look on one as an animal of a certain species, those people, than which nothing is more irritating.5 May.The weather continues to be quite lovely. I passthe afternoon watching the cricket, with a book. It is the nicest thing to do I know. This evening I went on the river. What is it that is so attractive in the sound of disturbed water? The contrast of sound to appearance, perhaps. Water looks so like a varnished surface that to see it break up, move and sound in moving is infinitely pleasing. Also it is exhilarating to see an unfortunate upset.I must work hard at writing. There are all sorts of writers I have never read; Poe, for instance, the master of the suggestive. I think my general reading is fairly good, but I have such an absurd memory.2 June.Two portraits of me in the Noat Art Society Summer Exhibition. Not very good, but both striking.*****29 September.Many things have come to pass since I last wrote in this. A distinguished literary gent has been kind enough to pay me a little praise for my efforts at literature. I am in the Senior too, now, and in the middle of writing a play that I cannot write. It is sticking lamentably. One last thing. They have given me a different room, and have put a new carpet into the new room for luck. And this smells rather like a tannery. Consequently I am being slowly poisoned. “Ai vai!”12 October.Really, Noat is amazing. Last night the President of the Essay Society, who is a master, wrote to ask me to join it. I refused; I am sick of Societies. This evening J. W. P. sends for me, and tells me he has heard about it and that I must join. Compulsion. Think of it—being made to join! Of course I can’t go now. I shall join formally and never look at it. It is extraordinary.Am readingCrime and Punishmentby Dostoievsky. What a book! I do not understand it yet. It is so weird and so big that it appals me. What an amazing man he was, with his epileptic fits which were much the same as visions really.20 October.About a week ago I finishedCrime and Punishment.It is a terrible book, and has had a profound effect. Technically speaking, it is badly put together, but it cuts one open, tragedy after tragedy, like a chariot with knives on the wheels. The whole thing is so ghastly that one resents D. harrowing one so. And then it ends, in two pages. But what afinale!Sonia, too, what she suffered. And the scene when she read the Bible.I have tried to readThe Idiot, and have finishedFathers and Sons, by Turgeniev, but it was a dream only. It is a most dreadful, awful, supremely great book, this Crime and its Punishment. And the death scene, with her in the flaming scarlet hat,and the parasol that was not in the least necessary at that time of day. With the faces crowding through the door, and the laughter behind. What a scene! And the final episode, in Siberia, by the edge of the river that went to the sea where there was freedom, reconciliation, love.What a force books are! This is like dynamite.END OF PART IExtract from a letter written by B. G. to Seymour.Sat., 7 April.“Dear Seymour,“An awful thing has happened. John is blinded. Mrs. Haye, his stepmother, you know, wrote a letter from Barwood which reached me this morning. The doctors say he hasn’t a chance of seeing again. She has asked me to write to all his school friends and to you. It is a terrible story. Apparently he was going home after Noat had ‘gone down,’ on Thursday, that is. The train was somewhere between Stroud and Gloucester, and was just going to enter a cutting. A small boy was sitting on the fence by the line and threw a big stone at the train. John must have been looking through the window at the time, for the broken glass caught him full, cut great furrows in his face, and both his eyes are blind for good. Isn’t it dreadful? Mrs. Haye says that he suffers terribly. It is a tragedy. Blindness, the most . . .” etc.
BLINDNESS
PART I—CATERPILLAR
Diary of John Haye, Secretary to the Noat Art Society, and in J. W. P.’s House at the Public School of Noat.
6 July (about).
IThas only just struck me that a kind of informal diary would be rather fun. No driving as to putting down something every day, just a sort of pipe to draw off the swamp water. It has rained all the past week. We went to Henley yesterday and it was wretched: B. G. going off to Phyllis Court and leaving me with Jonson, an insufferable bore who means very well and consequently makes things much worse. Seymour went with Dore who was dressed in what would be bad form at Monte, and at Henley . . . Had a row with Seymour and refused to be seen with Dore.
Wonderful T. Carlyle’s letters are, and his wife’s too. One can always tell them at a glance. She is the best letter writer there has ever been, I am told by a modern authority. I should think T. C. runsthis pretty fine, his explosive style going well into letters.
9 July.
Two people in my absence just had a water fight in my room, which enraged me.
The usual question asked, “Why not in anyone else’s room?” and of course no answer: however, felt better after calling Brimston an animated cabbage. His retort was, “Oh, cutting!” . . .
Seymour, B. G. and I were seriously discussing the production of a revue here next term, as they do at the universities, but as Seymour said, the difficulties were insuperable, too many old men to surmount.
19 July.
Walk with Seymour to-day, who was very charming. Fell in love with a transparent tortoiseshell cigarette case for three guineas, very cheap I thought. He keeps his band of satellites in very good order. When he told them to leave the School Shop they did. They positively worship him. He is an extraordinary creature, I don’t believe he could get on without them: keeping them as some people keep a dog, to let off steam at. A rift between Harington Brown and Seymour, very amusing to watch: H. B. much the same as Seymour but lacks his charm. Seymour furious because H. B. has brought out a bad magazine calledThe Shop Window.Seymour thinks it is a challenge to his preciousNoat Lights.If it is one it is a failure.
Dicky Maitland, who used to try and teach me science, has been writing to the Adjer to say that my Volunteer’s uniform is always untidy; the Adjer says he has had several notes: did you ever hear such cheek? But then the poor man is a military maniac.
As a matter of fact I ought to look quite well to-morrow on the occasion of the Yearly Inspection, as my tunic is nothing but oil stains, and everything else is sketchy and insecure.
J. W. P. told me last night that I was a person who wanted to fail at Noat and who thought (and only he knew how mistakenly) that he was going to be a success in after-life. A typically House-masterish thing to say. But then he was in a bad temper.
Later.—Have just announced that I go to the dentist to-morrow so shan’t be able to play in the House match that afternoon: frenzy; “I call that rather a shame,” etc. Isn’t it funny what a good player one becomes on a sudden?
The dentist to-morrow will be the third time he has tried to kill a nerve, and it isn’t nearly dead now, but still fairly active.
Tremendous excitement over Hutchinson’s coming novel, everyone trying to get a first edition.
Thursday.
Corps Inspection: all went well.
Afterwards I went up to the dentist, and in thetrain met Mayo, who is leaving early. Had a long talk mainly about Seymour and Co. As might be expected he did not like him, but what was more to the point, produced a most interesting reason and unanswerable to a person who holds views like his. Firstly, then, he has no use for a person who is no good at anything. He tolerates the clever scholar, he tolerates the half-wit athlete, but since he cannot see that any of us are remotely even one of these, he cannot bear us as a set.
What adds fuel to his fire is a person who glories in his eccentricity, which of course is true of all of us, in that we glory in ourselves. And of course the inevitable immorality touched on, which is always connected with eccentricities.
B. G. of course he merely regards as really and actively evil, and I don’t blame him as he does not know B. G., whose appearance is well calculated to sow the seeds of doubt and dislike in any righteous person. Furthermore, he can’t see what good any of us are going to do in after-life. He said that he was going into the army, he trumpeted that, and then because we were alone together he put me out of the argument by saying that I should be a future financier.
I could not answer him, there was nothing further to say, but in the course of the running fire that we kept up afterwards just to show that there was no ill-feeling, he actually said that Seymour went up in his estimation because he had won hisHouse hundred yards. Extraordinary! Very interesting, and, of course, a view which is almost incredible to me, in fact a great eye-opener.
Had to return in a hurry from the dentist who has given up trying to kill the nerve in my tooth. He prophesied what he called a “sting” in it to-night: he under-estimated it considerably. It is hurting damnably.
21 July.
Am reading a very good book on the Second Empire with Napoleon the Third. It is in the Lytton Strachey style, which after Carlyle’s is, I think, the most amusing.
The Volunteers’ Camp and all its attendant horrors is getting quite close now: though I could get off whenever I wanted to with my hammer-toes, but I want to go just for once.
22 July.
Bell’s, across the way, have bought as many as seven hunting-horns. Each possessor blows it unceasingly, just when one wants to read. They don’t do it all together, but take it in turns to keep up one forced note. Really, it might be Eton. They can only produce the one note during the whole day.
In addition to this trifling detail, it is “the thing to do” now to throw stones at me as I sit at my window. However, I have just called E. N. a “milch cow,” and shall on the first opportunity call D. J. B. a “bovine goat,” which generally relievesmatters. These epithets have the real authentic Noat Art Society touch, haven’t they?
24 July.
No Art Society this evening. No one turned up except H. B., who was to have read a paper; he was rather hurt. However, I think it will be all right, he has about as much admiration for the satellites as I have.
Am too tired to do anything but write this. The House rather alarmed and faintly contemptuous to hear I keep this; they have given me up, I think and hope. Rather a funny thing happened while fielding this afternoon. I had thrown myself down to stop a ball and I saw waving specks in my eyes for two minutes afterwards. I suppose my blood pressure was disturbed.
“For those in danger on the sea” is at the moment being sung by Truin’s at House prayers.
26 July.
J. W. P. came in last night to say that I had bad reports, everyone saying that I took no trouble, which is not surprising on both sides of the question: says that next term I shall have to do all my work in his study with the half-wits, a song which I have heard before, I think, though it is so encouraging coming at the end of a term’s boredom.
Camp at Tidworth will be delightful in this soaking weather.
27 July.
Have bought the most gorgeous sun hat for a horse in straw for sixpence, and have painted it in concentric rings. Shall wear it at Camp, and have fixed it up so that it will bend when worn like a very old-fashioned bonnet. In the ear-holes I am going to put violently swearing colours, orange and magenta, in ribbon I got for nothing by being nice to a shopwoman at Bowlay’s. Our little John is getting on, isn’t he?
The hat is a masterpiece, and being so has, of course, started a violent controversy. Those who consider it merely bounderism, and those who think it amusing, talk very seriously together and stop when I approach, while the faithful come in occasionally to tell me what the others have said.
The most beautiful letter ever written is undoubtedly that of Charlotte Brontë’s on her sister Emily’s death.
28 July.
No more work till the summer holidays. Have been relegated by the House selection committee to the dud tent at Camp, which amuses me vastly. Apparently those who manage the affairs of the tent prefer Bulwer and Maston to myself; more amusing still. Shall I get elected into the Reading Room next term? Probably not. I think as a matter of fact they want a mobbing tent which they know I would not join in, anyhow I shall be muchmore comfortable as I am: at any rate that reads better, and sounds so for that matter.
Apparently I shall get attacked if I wear my straw hat, a fact I can hardly believe. I have hadthemost heated arguments as to why I should not wear fancy dress; the fact remains that people are more prim and hidebound there than here, except that, as far as I can see, all and sundry combine to be rude to other schools.
29 July.
A sing-song in the Hall to-night, to which everyone but myself has gone: didn’t go for two reasons; first, because the cinema part of it was certain to be lamentable; secondly, Fryer irks me when he sings songs, and the applause he gets, for no other reason than that he is everything at games, and so is profitable to applaud, maddens me.
What is bad is that this school tends to turn the really clever into people who pretend for all they are worth to be the mediocrities which are the personification of the splendid manhood phrase. And in the end these poor people succeed and lose all the brains they ever had, which is distressing, particularly for me who could do with a few more.
Sunday.
Sing-song apparently a great success. There is an auction going on now, everything that has been handed down through the ages is being resold. I suppose some pictures have seen about forty auctions:the commonest are Thorburn’s petrified partridges, or worse still, those most weird and antiquated pictures of horse-racing, the horse’s neck being the length of its body.
Social ostracism which I am experiencing now for the first time for many terms is really incredibly funny. It begins with a studied vagueness when you address anyone, which means that he is frightened at being seen talking to you: it goes on, in direct ratio to the number of jaws they have about you, to a studied rudeness, and the lower and younger you are the more your room is mobbed. And then the whole thing blows over you on to some other unfortunate.
I suppose I have been rather tiresome lately, but all except T. D. and possibly E. N. are so distressingly the athletic type, who sink their whole beings in the school and its affairs, and are blind and almost ignorant of any world outside their own.
31 July.
The last flourish before Camp.
My room is a sight for the gods, piles and stacks of clothing to be packed, a bulging pot-bellied kit-bag filled with changes of clothing for the ten days’ horror, everything upside down, and over all the frenzied maid as near suicide as she ever gets: her chief job is to look for lost garments, and as she regards me with the deepest suspicion over a pair of tennis shoes, I am not left long alone. The stormin the Chinese tea-service has died down, and once more I am anchored precariously outside the haven of the barely tolerated.
I hear that the only hotel where one can get a bath in Camp has been put out of bounds, which is delightful. How furious Mamma will be: apparently the reason is that people used to drink there.
In Camp: 2 August.
Just a scrawl. It has been raining viciously as if with a purpose. At the moment I am lying on what is affectionately known as a “palliarse.” Underneath is deal planking. Underneath that is a torrent as we are on a hill and the accumulated effects of two days’ rain are flowing beneath. Above is a bell tent, long since condemned by the army authorities as unsound, so that the cloudburst which is pouring from Heaven penetrates freely. There is one spot under which lies Brown, the world’s greatest grouser, and it is appropriately threadbare. He was foolish enough to put soap on it; we had told him that if you soaped a bit of cloth it became waterproof, and now soapsuds drip down on to his face. We have also told him that his grousing is intolerable, and will be dealt with unless he suppresses it, so that he lies in a misery too deep for words, and is the only thing that keeps us happy.
There are, of course, rumours about our going home on account of the wet, but such a good thing could not possibly happen.
The food and the smell of grease in the eating tent are both very foul. The smell I was warned against by an old campaigner. Thank God my turn has not yet come for washing up, but I shall have to do it to-morrow. They are thinking themselves the most awful devils in the next tent with a bottle of port; perhaps if I had one I should feel one too.
Holidays: 11 August.
The village fête here yesterday, and after a three forty-five awakening,reveilleor whatever you like to call it, at Tidworth, I had to run about here when I arrived and be officious to all and sundry. An awful thing happened. It was towards the end when I was so tired I could hardly see. Mamma told me to go and find the young lady who ran the Clock Golf Competition and tell her to send in the names of the prize-winners. The young ladies who ran things were all surprisingly alike, disastrously so, and there were many of them. I went up to a girl I was sure had run the Clock Golf, and I asked her if she had done so. No answer. Again I asked, and again no answer. Somehow I felt only more sure from her silence that she had run it, so I asked her yet again, and more eagerly. There was no answer, but there came a blush like a banner which rallied all her friends to her, to protect her from the depredations of this young man. After that I hid myself in the house. I know what the neighbourhood will make of my reputation now. Mammalaughed; I have never heard her laugh so much before.
I have got the most vile and horrid “bedabbly” cold—Carlyle again. Had one or two highbrow talks with Seymour in the small canteen with two cubic feet air-space for each savage human, which was rather wonderful.
29 August.
I fished to-day and “killed” two tiddlers, one was a minnow, and such a small one at that that I thought it too infinitesimal even for the stable cat. That was a record broken, if in the wrong direction.
Mamma to-night on religion. What effect it had, and how far it went, at Noat? They are effectively stifling mine.
During dinner I saw a man run across the bottom of the garden, so when it was over I took the dogs, and with an eye to theatrical effect I put the bulldog on a leash, and led him snorting, pulling, panting and roaring round the garden. He made just the noise, on a minor scale, that one is led to believe a dragon made. William waited with Father’s revolver loaded with blank, awaiting a scream from me if I was attacked. He looked too ludicrous, with a paternal smile on his face.
2 September.
To my mind there is nothing so thrilling as the rushing, hungry rise the chub have here; it makes me tingle even now to think of it, and the morespectators on the bank watching, after you have hooked your fish, the better.
At the present Mamma is in a great state over someone on the Town Council of Norbury. After swearing me to secrecy she told me all about it, and I have forgotten. But the main thing is that she has her suspicions only and no proof, but that, of course, only makes her more sure. But she had a splendid speech in the middle about dishonesty on town councils when she was at her best. But I wish she would not take these things so seriously. She expects me to too, and when I don’t, she says, “Ah! you are too young, John dear.”
9 September.
Mamma not sleeping, so Ruffles, the chow, passed the night in my room, which he disliked intensely, so much so that when he did eventually doze off distrustfully, he had what is a rare thing with him, a nightmare of the most alarming and noisy order. I hope this Town Council business is not really keeping Mamma awake. Probably the wretched devil is quite innocent. It would be quite like Mamma to go up to him and accuse him of it. But then she couldn’t.
Caught seven fish yesterday, which wasn’t so bad. They were rising well.
NOAT, Friday, 29 September.
Back to the old place again, and very depressed in consequence: however, I am now a full-blown specialistin history, and am allowed to send small boys on errands as I am one of the illustrious first hundred in the school. But the football is going to be awful.
I came back on Wednesday. As usual, nothing is changed in the least: Bell’s opposite have discarded their hunting-horns of accursed memory for an accordion and a banjo, just as painful.
What with the accordion and the cold and the noise and the discomfort and Cole, who I am up to in history, this has ceased to be a life and has become a mere existence. However, the outlook is always black at the beginning of the term.
Later.—An excellent meeting of the Art Society: very amusing. There was a grand encounter between Seymour and Harington Brown and B. G.’s unrivalled powers of invective were used with great effect. His face, his voice, everything combines to make him a most formidable opponent in wordy warfare.
1 October.
Since all my contemporaries spend all their time in the Senior Reading Room with a newly-acquired gramophone, I am left alone and undisturbed, which is very pleasant. Am feeling much more cheerful now, which I attribute to a cup of hot tea.
Am keeping up all the tradition by being the only person in the school with a greatcoat on. Why is it that when there is the hardest and most bitter frost no one wears a greatcoat here? I think it is so absurd,and get rewarded for my pains by catching reproving glances from the new boys, who, of course, are ultra careful, so much as to say, “You are making an ass of yourself with that coat on.”
Seymour and B. G. are going to givethemost immense and splendiferous leaving party, which is going to be wild fun.
3 October.
This morning an outrage: I am eating my morning bun, given to me for that purpose by J. W. P., when my tooth meets a stone, and half of it is broken off clean. Result, an immense jagged cavity which I shall have filled, at J. W. P.’s expense, with platinum, and set with brilliants. I am furious.
Brown, a friend of mine, has hit Billing, who keeps the food shop where you get rat poison, in the stomach so that he crumpled up behind the counter: the best thing that has happened for years.
Billing had apparently hit Brown previously, and had sent him to the Headmaster for being rude, and he, instead of backing Billing up, had asked Brown why he had not hit him back: so when Billing hit Rockfeller to-day, Rockfeller being with Brown, Brown was rude to Billing, who attacked Brown, who laid Billing out. Meanwhile Brown has gone to his House master to ask that Billing’s shop may be put out of bounds, and Billing presumably is going to the Headmaster. There will be a fine flare-up.
6 October.
Rejoice, O land! My director on seeing my first essay, and a bad one at that, tells me I ought to do well with my writing. What fun it would be if I could write! I see myself as the English Anatole France, a vista of glory . . . superb!
I have fallen hopelessly in love with the ties in Bartlett’s window. I shall have to buy them all, even though they are quite outrageous: the most cunning, subtle and violent checks imaginable.
Sunday, 8 October.
This morning we had a howling dervish of a missioner who comes once a year. All his ghastly stories were there and his awful metaphors and his incredible requests. In this morning’s sermon he asked us to give his mission a vision; last time it was that we should pray for it, and before that, that we should give up our holidays to work there. To-day we were told that even cabbages had visions, and God knows what else. He was upset by our laughing at him and he broke down several times, Chris crowning himself with glory by going out in the middle of the man’s discourse clasping a pink handkerchief to his nose which he said was bleeding. Really the pulpit is no place for self-revelation, but I am afraid the man has not learnt it yet.
9 October.
Two youths have been insolent to me in the Music Schools. Am I considered the school idiot? If soI am not surprised; any way I was most polite to them—next time measures will be taken. The best way with these people is to ask them their names; it generally shuts them up. I believe my appearance is too weak; I shall have to grow mustachios. I am always the person the lost Asiatic asks his way from, and French come to me as fly to fly-paper, ditto the hysterical matron. Such is fame.
12 October.
Guy Denver tells me the following: It is extremely cold, and he and Conway are walking together. Says Conway, “God, I am cold!” Guy: “Then why don’t you wear an overcoat?” “Oh! then I should be classed with the John Haye and Ben Gore lot.” That is what the fear of popular opinion drives the ordinary Public Schoolboy to; that sort of thing is constantly recurring like the plague.
15 October.
This afternoon a delicious six-mile walk with B. G. The weather was perfect, a warm sun and everything misty, with “the distances very distant,” as Kipling puts it. Though we did not rock the world with our utterances, it was very enjoyable indeed.
20 October.
Greene has ordered several chickens’ heads, lights, etc., to be sent up to White, which we hope will be a nice surprise. It is rather a good idea.
Have been painting a portrait of Napoleon, cubistand about three foot square, with B. G., who has got it as a punishment from a new master. He will soon lose that most refreshing originality. Moreover he said that B. G. was not to do anything comic, which showed that he was already beginning to lose it. It just depends how much the others have instilled into him to see his manner of receiving our glaring monstrosity.
New phrase I have invented: “To play Keating’s to someone else’s beetle.” Used with great success on Seymour who is enraged by it.
21 October.
This morning, so I am told, Seymour and B. G. dragged a toy tin motor car along the pavement on the end of a string. How I wish I had been there: it is quite unprecedented, and seems to have outraged the dignity of the whole school, which is excellent.
Seymour created another sensation by quoting his own poetry for to-day’s saying lesson, which caused much amusement. Everyone who matters athletically now thinks it is the thing to do to know Seymour, which is intensely funny, and into the bargain I feel I get a little reflected glory when I walk with him down the street. The Captain of the Rugger smiled at me the other day. I nearly spat in his face (but of course I really smiled my nicest).
Have written to several artists to ask them to talk to the Society. When we founded it we put in therules that we must get men down to speak to it; it is the only way of keeping the thing alive. And I think if we can get someone down the Society will recover from its present rather dicky condition.
25 October.
Have just had a letter from the biggest swell I wrote to, saying that he will come down to the Society on 14 November. It really is too splendid: he is the most flaming tip-top swell who has written thousands of books, as well as his drawings, which are very well known indeed. All these people are so nice and encouraging about the Society, which is splendid.
31 October.
I am seventeen now—quite aged.
Last night was the gala invitation night of the Society, and was animmensesuccess, where I had secretly feared failure.
All those invited came—all the boys, all the masters, and all to-day I have been hearing nothing but how pleased and interested they were. It was on Post-Impressionism, a subject which had the merit of being one which the Society knew more about than anyone else present. B. G. made the most gorgeous speech of pure invective which enthralled everyone. The Society is now positively booming, even T. R. C. having thawed into enthusiasm. I think it is a permanency now.
Fires on alternate nights now, which isn’t so very,very bad, and the weather is slowly improving. Extraordinary how the weather affects my spirits. I had a telegram from Mamma who had remembered my birthday, which is splendid, for somehow I hate its being forgotten. She never remembers till Nan reminds her. But the football, it is enough to kill one.
Would you believe it—but J. W. P. gave me a long jaw on the “hopelessness” of my having a bad circulation, because I habitually wore a sweater underneath my waistcoat: It’s a filthy habit, I know, but he drives one on to it with his allowance of fires, and then he tries to blame one: it is an outrage.
1 November.
It is freezing again, bad luck to it.
B. G. and I in the morning went up to Windsor and got some electioneering pamphlets from the Committee Rooms, and have posted them all over Noat, including the Volunteers’ Notice Board and the School Office and the Library. Later I put them up all over the House notice boards, which scored a glorious rise out of “those that matter.” These people are really too terribly stodgy; they have no sense of humour, though they did faintly appreciate the pamphlet on the maids’ door which said that Socialism was bent on doing away with marriage.
This afternoon I had to read fifty pages of mediæval history, which has left my brain reeling andhelpless: it is too absurd making one learn all about these fool Goths and Vandals: they ceased to count in practical politics some time ago now, so why revive them?
11 November.
Have just conceived the idea of having a gallery of all the people I loathe most at Noat to be pasted up on the door of my room, which has been denuded of the rules of the Art Society since I spent a frenzied afternoon changing the room slightly.
Smith, the master, crosses his cheques with a ruler. One comes across something amazing every day here.
This is the coldest day I have ever met at Noat, and a very thick fog thrown in, greatly conducive to misery, but strangely enough I am most cheerful, having written a tale calledSonny, which is by far the best I have done so far.
15 November.
Quite the most wonderful day of my life. It was polling day, so after two o’clock (a saying lesson so we got out early), B. G., Seymour and I went to Strand caparisoned all over with Conservative blue and with enormous posters.
When we reached Strand, we found all the Socialist working-men-God-bless-them drawn up in rows on either side of the street, so we three went down the rows haranguing. We each got into the centre of groups, and expected to be killed at any moment,for there is something about me that makes that type see red. However, they contained themselves very nicely while we talked nonsense at them.
Then we went to the station and got a cab, and with B. G. on the box and Seymour and I behind we set off, B. G. with posters stuck through his umbrella, and dead white from excitement. We went by the byways shouting and screaming till we came to the top of the High Street. We then turned down this; by this time all of us were worked up and quite mad, and eventually came to the Cross again, where we passed the Socialists who were collected in a meeting. They cheered and hooted, and we went round the same way only shorter, and after going down the High Street, turned down towards Noat, where we soon picked up six or so Noatians. With them we returned, some running, with a rattle making a deafening din. We passed the Labour and Socialist meeting on the “Out” road of the railway station, and went over the railway bridge, where we paid off the cab. We then returned in a body past the meeting, which broke up and followed across the cross-roads, pelting us with rolled-up rags, etc. Then at the corner of the road to Noat we formed a meeting. I was terrified at moments, and wildly exhilarated the rest. The meeting lasted twenty minutes, questions being asked the whole time. B. G. did most of the speaking; Seymour and I did a little too. Woodville harangued the women; he was very good with them. They had their spokesman,an old labourer, very tub-thumpy, and the whole of this part of the entertainment is a blur. Looking round in the middle of it I saw that all the Conservative men and women were formed up behind us, which was touching. All this time messages were coming from the fellows on the outside that the people there were talking lovingly of murder (on us), and matters did look very nasty at one time, but it worked off. The police came at the end with an inspector and marched us off, I shaking every man’s hand that I could see. So we returned shouting madly. It was too wonderful; never to be forgotten.
16 November.
I now understand why men were brave in the war; it was because they were afraid of being cowards, that fear overcoming that of death. The crowd in Strand and having to go back into it again and have things thrown at one—it was terrifying at first for so great a coward as myself, but great fun when one got hotted up. The women were by far the worst. One old beldame screamed: “You dirty tykes, you dirty tykes!” continuously.
Later.—Another wonderful time. I went with Seymour up to the market-place of the town of Noat, outside the Town Rooms, and there we had another stormy meeting. I talked a very great deal this time; Bronsill and I went on the whole time to rather an excited crowd. Then he and I were dragged off and put on a balcony where the Pressphotographed us, and he addressed the crowd and I prompted him and hear-heared, etc. I would have spoken had there been time, but lunch arrived and we departed. It was too wonderful; it is tremendous fun being above a crowd, about 150 this time, and I wasn’t a bit nervous. Nor was I terrified when the crowd became nasty again as on the previous day; it is the most exhilarating thing I know—far better than hunting. Meanwhile, a master saw me and J. W. P. knows. What will happen?
17 November.
Nothing happened with J. W. P.; he didn’t mind, and was vastly amused.
Have written another story all about blood; not impossibly bad but sadly mediocre. If only I could write! But I think I improve. Those terrible, involved sentences of mine are my undoing.
Fox was pleased at my admiring Carlyle.
18 November.
Harington Brown asked me for an MS. for the magazine he is producing: gave himSonny, but don’t suppose it will be suitable, though I am sure it has some worth. The thing is only about 1400 words, and when he refuses it I am going to send it up to some London magazine which will take very short stories, and at present I don’t know of one.
I rather hope that H. B. won’t accept the thing. The ephemerals are always putrescent, and nobodywith any sense reads them. There have been about three editions of it so far, one a term.
19 November, after lunch.
Have been accepted by H. B., with mixed feelings on my part. However, his thing is a cut above the usual ephemeral and is quite sensible, but there is a sense of degradation attached to appearing in print. But I hope this means that I can write; it’s not bad work as I’m only just seventeen. Perhaps it is too good, and I shan’t do anything again.
Carlyle’s flight to Varennes in hisRevolutionis almost too painful to read, so exciting is it to me. It is all untrue, of course, they did not go half as slow as he would make out, nevertheless it is superb.
Thank God there are only a few more weeks of this football.
*****
NOAT, 26 January.
What a long interval, and what a very little has happened! The holidays were enlivened by two deaths in the village, which much excited Mamma, and one or two scandals in the neighbourhood, which she followed carefully without taking up sides.
The bulldog died, which was very sad; he was such a dear old thing. Mamma was very much upset about that too, in her funny way. She seems to spend more and more time in the village now,and to see less and less people. One comes back here looking forward to the fullness of the place.
We came back yesterday, and I feel absolutely lost without B. G. and Seymour, who have both left. They do make a gap, for we three understood each other, and we ladled out sympathy to each other when life became too black. And now I am alone, in a hornets’ nest of rabid footballers.
At the moment I am reading Gogol’sDead Souls.His word-pictures are superb: better than Ruskin’s or Carlyle’s, and his style is so terse and clean-cut, at least it is in the translation, but it shines through that. I am an absolute slave. I shall keep this book for ever by me if I have enough cash to buy it with. He is wonderful.
He is at his best, I think, in description; I have met nothing like it. Almost he ousts Carlyle; not quite, though. He is a poet through and through.
29 January.
But surely this is most beautiful:
The trills of a lark fall drop by drop down an unseen aery ladder, and the calls of the cranes, floating by in a long string, like the ringing notes of silver bugles, resound in the void of melodiously vibrating ether.
He is a poet: and his book is in very truth a poem. It is Gogol.
30 January.
Am reading Winston Churchill’s biography of his father, which is very wonderful.
I hardly remember B. G. as having existed now. That doesn’t mean to say that I don’t answer his letters, but life goes on much the same.
Did I say that I had become the budding author at home? No, I think not. I have written in all three things, so that I am hailed as a Napoleon of literature. Such is fame. I only wish I deserved these eulogies, and must set seriously to work soon. Mrs. Conder most of all seems impressed. Talks at tea of nothing but where she can take me to get “copy”—which means Brighton, I suppose; not that horrid things don’t happen there, though. But she is the limit. Since Conder died she has blossomed. At least, when he was alive, one could make allowances for her, because he was so foul, but now there is nothing to say. She is sogay, sodevilish gay!But all this is very untrue, unkind and ungrateful. In all she has given me £5 in tips, and a cookery book for Boy Scouts.
17 February.
In a moment of rash exuberance I bought a cigarette-holder about eight inches long. Have been smoking it all the afternoon. Caused quite a sensation in the middle-class atmosphere of the tea shopchezBeryl.
Am delivering an oration to the Arts Society on Japanese Art. I am going to speak it and not read it, which is bravery carried to foolhardiness. But it is good to get a little practice in speaking.
22 February.
Just been to dinner with the Headmaster. I was put next him and occupied his ear for twenty minutes. In the course of that time I managed to ask for a theatre for the school to act in, and for a school restaurant where one could get a decent British steak with onions, and, if possible, with beer. I also advanced arguments in favour of this. The only thing we agreed on was the sinfulness of having a window open. He listened to it all, which was very good of him.
On Monday I got off my speech on Japanese Art all right, I think, save for the very beginning, which was shaky to a point of collapse. To-morrow I go to tea with Harington Brown. Meanwhile at the tea Dore gave me we arranged that the Art Society should give a marionette show. The authorities agreed the next day and gave us the Studio. Someone is busy writing the scenario, about lovers thwarted whose names end inio.Then we shall paint scenery. It will be such fun. Of course the figures will be stationary.
The only modern Germans who could paint are Lembach and Boechel.
24 February.
Had tea with H. B. I have sent him a story for this term’sNoat Days.It won’t be accepted, I suppose. It is an experiment in short sentences. He read me the libretto of the marionettes as far as hehad got, and it really was remarkably good. He is producing it in his ephemeral.
10 March.
This morning occurred one of those incidents which render school life at moments unbearable to such as myself. I was raising a spoonful of the watered porridge that they see fit to choke us with, when someone jerked my arm——The puerility of it all, yet the wit which I, for my years, should enjoy according to nature. Of course there was a foul mess, as of one who had vomited, mostly over me. However, it only took an hour or so to regain my equanimity. Incidentally I had a little ink-throwing exhibition in the fool’s room. I had always wanted to see the exact effect of throwing a paint brush at the wall to appreciate Ruskin’s criticism. It was most interesting.
Later.—What an odious superior fellow I am now! It is my mood to-night. Sometimes I think it is better to be just what one is, and not be everlastingly apologising for oneself in so many words. To be rude when you want to be rude—and how very much nicer it would make you when you wanted to be nice. I am sure it is all a matter of relative thought. You think you are working hard by your standards, and to another man you don’t seem to be working at all. Don’t you work just as hard as the other really? Because, after all, it is only a mental question. I shall expound this to J. W. P. I have already done so to Gale with rathermarked success. It is a very good principle at Noat.
11 March.
I wish the world was not so ugly and unhappy. And there is so much cynicism. And why does Science label and ticket everything so that the world is like a shop, with their price on all the articles? There are still a few auction rooms where people bid for what they think most worth while, but they are getting fewer and fewer. And people love money so, and I shall too I expect when I have got out of what our elders tell me is youthful introspection. But why shouldn’t one go through something which is so alive and beautiful as that. But they only say, smiling, “Yes; I went through all that once; you will soon get over that.” I shall fight for money and ruin others. Down with Science. Romanticism, all spiritual greatness is going. Soon music will be composed by scientific formulæ; painting has been in France, and look how photography has put art back. Oh, for a Carlyle now! Some prophet one could follow.
15 March.
Spent a whole afternoon at work on the marionette stage. I carpentered while E. V. C. tinkered up the scenes he has painted. Between us we got through surprisingly little in a surprisingly long time.
My story in the newNoat Dayswill appear shortly. I read the proofs of the story at extremespeed and thought I had never read anything worse or feebler. The paltry humour sickened me, though the end did seem to have some kick in it.
19 March.
The marionette show becomes more and more hectic. One hardly has time to breathe. There is a performance on Saturday: the day after the day after to-morrow. Nothing done, of course, and the Studio a scene of hysterical budding artists, mad enough in private life, but when under the influence of so strong and so public an emotion surpass themselves in do-nothing-with-the-most-possible-noise-and-trouble.
1 April.
The marionette play continues to be an immense pleasure. We give a children’s performance to-morrow at three. Answers from mothers pour in: I am afraid it may be too full. How well do little children see? They are soverylow down when they sit. I think the life of a stage manager must be one of the most trying on this earth.
Good Friday.
On a Pretty Woman, “And that infantile fresh air of hers” (from Browning).
“If you take a photograph of a man digging, in my opinion he is sure to look as if he were not digging” (Van Gogh). Have been reading Van Gogh’s letters. They are the hardest things I have ever taken on. He is so very much in earnest, and sovery difficult to understand. I think I have got a good deal of what he means.
A wonderful postcard from B. G. in Venice:
We are here till Thursday, wondering who has won the Boat Race, the National, the Junior School Quarter-Mile and the Hammersmith Dancing Record.
Read a little Carlyle to a few of the House. What else could it be but incomprehensible to them? “Mad,” they called it. Anything of genius is “mad” in a Public School. And rightly so, I suppose.
4 April.
One day more to the end of the term. How nice it will be to be back, to start life again for a day or two. The holidays are disgustingly short, though, only three weeks and a bit.
We have just given our third and last performance of the marionette play. It has been a wild success and should, if possible, be repeated. But the light in the summer would be too strong and everyone leaves at the end of next summer, so I don’t suppose we shall have enough people to get one up next winter!
Oh, for to-morrow to go quickly.
Holidays: 10 April.
Back again to peace, even if it is cotton wool and stagnation, but very pleasant all the same. Am reading George Moore’sAve, with considerable relish and amusement. He is so very witty.
My reports have come in and are uninteresting;no one very enthusiastic, which is not to be wondered at.
20 April.
“Polygamy is a matter of opinion, not of morality.” Montague Glass is undoubtedly the greatest comedian of letters.Potash and Perlmutteris superb.
At dinner to-night Mamma informed me in one of her rare pronouncements on myself, that I always kept people at arm’s length. It sounds an awful thing to write, but I seldom meet anyone who interests me more than myself: my own fault, I suppose.
We have acquired a gramophone, and Strauss’ “Last Waltz” has bewitched me. It is such a lovely thing.
NOAT, 4 May.
Back to it again: good old Noat, bloody place! Have just seen a book entitledUp Against it in the Desert, which sufficiently describes my feelings at the moment.
It is so hot as to make writing impossible as my pen and style testify. I shall play no cricket this term, but will just read. I can get off the cricket on the score of health, which becomes increasingly bad. Last holidays we went from doctor to doctor. They look on one as an animal of a certain species, those people, than which nothing is more irritating.
5 May.
The weather continues to be quite lovely. I passthe afternoon watching the cricket, with a book. It is the nicest thing to do I know. This evening I went on the river. What is it that is so attractive in the sound of disturbed water? The contrast of sound to appearance, perhaps. Water looks so like a varnished surface that to see it break up, move and sound in moving is infinitely pleasing. Also it is exhilarating to see an unfortunate upset.
I must work hard at writing. There are all sorts of writers I have never read; Poe, for instance, the master of the suggestive. I think my general reading is fairly good, but I have such an absurd memory.
2 June.
Two portraits of me in the Noat Art Society Summer Exhibition. Not very good, but both striking.
*****
29 September.
Many things have come to pass since I last wrote in this. A distinguished literary gent has been kind enough to pay me a little praise for my efforts at literature. I am in the Senior too, now, and in the middle of writing a play that I cannot write. It is sticking lamentably. One last thing. They have given me a different room, and have put a new carpet into the new room for luck. And this smells rather like a tannery. Consequently I am being slowly poisoned. “Ai vai!”
12 October.
Really, Noat is amazing. Last night the President of the Essay Society, who is a master, wrote to ask me to join it. I refused; I am sick of Societies. This evening J. W. P. sends for me, and tells me he has heard about it and that I must join. Compulsion. Think of it—being made to join! Of course I can’t go now. I shall join formally and never look at it. It is extraordinary.
Am readingCrime and Punishmentby Dostoievsky. What a book! I do not understand it yet. It is so weird and so big that it appals me. What an amazing man he was, with his epileptic fits which were much the same as visions really.
20 October.
About a week ago I finishedCrime and Punishment.It is a terrible book, and has had a profound effect. Technically speaking, it is badly put together, but it cuts one open, tragedy after tragedy, like a chariot with knives on the wheels. The whole thing is so ghastly that one resents D. harrowing one so. And then it ends, in two pages. But what afinale!Sonia, too, what she suffered. And the scene when she read the Bible.
I have tried to readThe Idiot, and have finishedFathers and Sons, by Turgeniev, but it was a dream only. It is a most dreadful, awful, supremely great book, this Crime and its Punishment. And the death scene, with her in the flaming scarlet hat,and the parasol that was not in the least necessary at that time of day. With the faces crowding through the door, and the laughter behind. What a scene! And the final episode, in Siberia, by the edge of the river that went to the sea where there was freedom, reconciliation, love.
What a force books are! This is like dynamite.
END OF PART I
Extract from a letter written by B. G. to Seymour.
Sat., 7 April.
“Dear Seymour,
“An awful thing has happened. John is blinded. Mrs. Haye, his stepmother, you know, wrote a letter from Barwood which reached me this morning. The doctors say he hasn’t a chance of seeing again. She has asked me to write to all his school friends and to you. It is a terrible story. Apparently he was going home after Noat had ‘gone down,’ on Thursday, that is. The train was somewhere between Stroud and Gloucester, and was just going to enter a cutting. A small boy was sitting on the fence by the line and threw a big stone at the train. John must have been looking through the window at the time, for the broken glass caught him full, cut great furrows in his face, and both his eyes are blind for good. Isn’t it dreadful? Mrs. Haye says that he suffers terribly. It is a tragedy. Blindness, the most . . .” etc.