UPTON,June 4, 1904.
DEAR HERBERT,—I have nothing to write about. The summer is come, and with it I enter into purgatory; I am poured out like water, and my heart is like melting wax; I have neither courage nor kindness, except in the early morning or the late evening. I cannot work, and I cannot be lazy. The only consolation I have—and I wish it were a more sustaining one—is that most people like hot weather better.
I will put down for you in laborious prose what if I were an artist I would do in half-a-dozen strokes. There is a big place near here, Rushton Park. I was bicycling with Randall past the lodge, blaming the fair summer, like the fisherman in Theocritus, when he asked if I should like to ride through. The owner, Mr. Payne, is a friend of his, and laid a special injunction on him to go through whenever he liked. We were at once admitted, and in a moment we were in a Paradise. Payne is famed for his gardeners, and I think I never saw a more beautiful place of its kind. The ground undulates very gracefully, and we passed by velvety lawns, huge towering banks of rhododendron all ablaze with flower, exquisite vistas and glades, with a view of far-off hills. It seemed to me to be an enchanted pleasaunce, like the great Palace in The Princess. Now and then we could see the huge facade of the house above us, winking through its sunblinds. There was not a soul to be seen; and this added enormously to the magical charm of the place, as though it were the work of a Genie, not made with hands. We passed a huge fountain dripping into a blue-tiled pool, over a great cockleshell of marble; then took a path which wound into the wood, all a mist of fresh green, and in a moment we were in a long old-fashioned garden, with winding box hedges, and full of bright flowers. To the left, where the garden was bordered by the wood, was set a row of big marble urns, grey with age, on high pedestals, all dripping with flowering creepers. It was very rococo, like an old French picture, but enchanting for all that. To the right was a long, mellow brick wall, under which stood some old marble statues, weather-stained and soft of hue. The steady sun poured down on the sweet, bright place, and the scent of the flowers filled the air with fragrance, while a dove, hidden in some green towering tree, roo-hooed delicately, as though her little heart was filled with an indolent contentment.
The statue that stood nearest us attracted my attention. I cannot conceive what it was meant to represent. It was the figure of an old, bearded man, with a curious brimless hat on his head, and a flowing robe; in his hands he held and fingered some unaccountable object of a nondescript shape; and he had an unpleasant fixed smile, which he seemed to turn on us, as though he knew a secret connected with the garden which he might not reveal, and which if revealed would fill the hearers with a secret horror. I do not think that I have often seen a figure which affected me so disagreeably. He seemed to be saying that within this bright and fragrant place lay some tainted mystery which it were ill to tamper with. It was as though we opened a door out of some stately corridor, and found a strange, beast-like thing running to and fro in a noble room.
Well, I do not know! But it seems to me a type of many things, and I doubt not that the wise-hearted patrician, the former owner, who laid out the garden and set the statue in its place, did so with a purpose. It is for us to see that there lies no taint behind our pleasures; but even if this be not the message, the heart of the mystery, may not the figure stand perhaps for the end, the bitter end, which lies ahead of all, when the lip is silent and the eye shut, and the heart is stilled at last?
The quiet figure with its secret, wicked smile, somehow slurred for me the sunshine and the pleasant flowers, and I was glad when we turned away.—Ever yours,
T. B.
UPTON,June 11, 1904.
DEAR HERBERT,—Yes, I am sure you are right. The thing I get more and more impatient of every year is conventionality in every form. It is rather foolish, I am well aware, to be impatient about anything; and great conventionality of mind is not inconsistent with entire sincerity, for the simple reason that conventionality is what ninety-nine hundredths of the human race enjoy. Most people have no wish to make up their own minds about anything; they do not care to know what they like or why they like it. This is often the outcome of a deep-seated modesty. The ordinary person says to himself, "Who am I that I should set up a standard? If all the people that I know like certain occupations and certain amusements, they are probably right, and I will try to like them too." I don't mean that this feeling is often put into words, but it is there; and there is for most people an immense power in habit. People grow to like what they do, and seldom inquire if they really like it, or why they like it.
Of course, to a certain extent, conventionality is a useful, peaceful thing. I am not here recommending eccentricity of any kind. People ought to fall in simply and quietly with ordinary modes of life, dress, and behaviour; it saves time and trouble; it sets the mind free. But what I rather mean is that, when the ordinary usages of life have been complied with, all sensible people ought to have a line of their own about occupation, amusements, friends, and not run to and fro like sheep just where the social current sets. What I mean is best explained by a couple of instances. I met at dinner last night our old acquaintance, Foster, who was at school with us. He was in my house; I don't think you ever knew much of him. He was a pleasant, good-humoured boy enough; but his whole mind was set on discovering the exact code of social school life. He wanted to play the right games, to wear the right clothes, to know the right people. He liked being what he called "in the swim." He never made friends with an obscure or unfashionable boy. He was quite pleasant to his associates when he was himself obscure; but he waited quietly for his opportunity to recommend himself to prominent boys, and, when the time came, he gently threw over all his old companions and struck out into more distinguished regions. He was never disagreeable or conceited; he merely dropped his humble friends until they too were approved as worthy of greater distinction, and then he took them up again. He succeeded in his ambitions, as most cool and clear-headed persons do. He became what would be called very popular; he gave himself no airs; he was always good company; he was never satirical or critical. The same thing has gone on ever since. He married a nice wife; he secured a good official position. Last night, as I say, I met him here. He came into the room with the same old pleasant smile, beautifully dressed, soberly appointed. His look and gestures were perfectly natural and appropriate. He has never made any attempt to see me or keep up old acquaintance; but here, where I have a certain standing and position, it was obviously the right thing to treat me with courteous deference. He came up to me with a genial welcome, and, but for a little touch of prosperous baldness, I could have imagined that he was hardly a day older than when he was a boy. He reminded me of some cheerful passages of boyhood; he asked with kindly interest after my work; he paid me exactly the right compliments; and I became aware that I was, for the moment, one of the pawns in his game, to be delicately pushed about where it suited him. We talked of other matters; he held exactly the right political opinions, a mild and cautious liberalism; he touched on the successes of certain politicians and praised them appropriately; he deplored the failure of certain old friends in political life. "A very good fellow," he said of Hughes, "but just a little—what shall I say?—impracticable?" He had seen all the right plays, heard the right music, read the right books. He deplored the obscurity of George Meredith, but added that he was an undoubted genius. He confessed himself to be an ardent admirer of Wagner; he thought Elgar a man of great power; but he had not made up his mind about Strauss. I found that "not making up his mind about" a person was one of his favourite expressions. If he sees that some man is showing signs of vigour and originality in any department of life, he keeps his eye upon him; if he passes safely through the shallows, he praises him, saying that he has watched his rise; if he fails, our friend will be ready with the reasons for his failure, adding that he always feared that so-and-so was a little unpractical.
I can't describe to you the dreariness and oppression that fell upon me. The total absence of generosity, of independent interest, weighed on my soul. The one quality that this equable and judicious critic was on the look-out for was the power of being approved. Foster's view seemed to knock the bottom out of life, to deprive everything equally of charm and individuality.
The conversation turned on golf, and one of the guests, whom I am shortly about to describe, said bluffly that he considered golf and drink to be the two curses of the country. Our polite friend turned courteously towards him, treated the remark as an excellent sally, and then said that he feared he must himself plead guilty to a great devotion to golf. "You see all kinds of pleasant people," he said, "in such a pleasant way; and then it tempts one into the open air; and it is such an excellent investment, in the way of exercise, for one's age; a man can play a very decent game till he is sixty—though, of course, it is no doubt a little overdone." We all felt that he was right; he took the rational, the sensible view; but it tempted me, though I successfully resisted the temptation, to express an exaggerated dislike of golf which I do not feel.
The guest whose remark had occasioned this discourse is one of my colleagues, Murchison by name—you don't know him—a big, rugged, shy, sociable fellow, who is in many ways one of the best masters here. He is always friendly, amusing, courteous. He holds strong opinions, which he does not produce unless the occasion demands it. He keeps a good deal to himself, follows his own pursuits, and knows his own mind. He is very tolerant, and can get on with almost everybody. The boys respect him, like his teaching, think him clever, sensible, and amusing. There are a great many things about which he knows nothing, and is always ready to confess his ignorance. But whenever he does understand a subject, and he has a strong taste for art and letters, you always feel that his thoughts and opinions are fresh and living. They are not produced like sardines from a tin, with a painful similarity and regularity. He has strong prejudices, for which he can always give a reason; but he is always ready to admit that it is a matter of taste. He does not tilt in a Quixotic manner at established things, but he goes along trying to do his work in the best manner attainable. He is no genius, and his character is by no means a perfect one; he has pronounced faults, of which he is perfectly conscious, and which he never attempts to disguise. But he is simple, straightforward, affectionate, and sincere. If he were more courageous, more fiery, he would be, I think, a really great man; but this he somehow misses.
The two men, Foster and Murchison, are as great a contrast as can well be imagined. They serve to illustrate exactly what I mean. Our friend Foster is perfectly correct and admirably pleasant. You would never think of confiding in him, or saying to him what you really felt; but, on the other hand, there is no one whom I would more willingly consult in a small and delicate point of practical conduct—and his advice would be excellent.
But Murchison is a real man; he knows his limitations, but he takes nothing second-hand. He brings his own mind and character to bear on every problem, and judges people and things on their own merits.
Of course one does not desire that conventional people should strive after unconventionality. That produces the most sickening conventionality of all, because it is merely an attempt to construct a pose that shall be accepted as unconventional. The only thing is to be natural; and, after all, if one merely desires to see how the cat jumps and then to jump after it, it is better to do so frankly and make no pretence about it.
But I am sure that it is one's duty as a teacher to try and show boys that no opinions, no tastes, no emotions are worth much unless they are one's own. I suffered acutely as a boy from the lack of being shown this. I found—I am now speaking of intellectual things—that certain authors were held up to me as models which I was unfortunate enough to dislike. Instead of making up my own mind about it, instead of trying to see what I did admire and why I admired it, I tried feebly for years to admire what I was told was admirable. The result was waste of time and confusion of thought. In the same way I followed feebly, as a boy, after the social code. I tried to like the regulation arrangements, and thought dimly that I was in some way to blame because I did not. Not until I went up to Cambridge did the conception of mental liberty steal upon me—and then only partly. Of course if I had had more originality I should have perceived this earlier. But the world appeared to me a great, organised, kindly conspiracy, which must be joined, in however feeble a spirit. I have learnt gradually that, after a decent compliance with superficial conventionalities, there are not only no penalties attached to independence, but that there, and there alone, is happiness to be found; and that the rewards of a free judgement and an authentic admiration are among the best and highest things that the world has to bestow....—Ever yours,
T. B.
UPTON,June 18, 1904.
DEAR HERBERT,—I am sick at heart. I received one of those letters this morning which are the despair of most schoolmasters. I have in my house a boy aged seventeen, who is absolutely alone in the world. He has neither father or mother, brother or sister. He spends his holidays with an aunt, a clever and charming person, but a sad invalid (by the way, in passing, what a wretched thing in English it is that there is no female of the word "man"; "woman" means something quite different, and always sounds slightly disrespectful; "lady" is impossible, except in certain antique phrases). The boy is frail, intellectual, ungenial. He is quite incapable of playing games decently, having neither strength or aptitude; he finds it hard to make friends, and the consequence is that, like all clever people who don't meet with any success, he takes refuge in a kind of contemptuous cynicism. His aunt is devoted to him and to his best interests, but she is too much of an invalid to be able to look after him; the result is that he is allowed practically to do exactly as he likes in the holidays; he hates school cordially, and I don't wonder. He fortunately has one taste, and that is for science, and it is more than a taste, it is a real passion. He does not merely dabble about with chemicals, or play tricks with electricity; but he reads dry, hard, abstruse science, and writes elaborate monographs, which I read with more admiration than comprehension. This is almost his only hold on ordinary life, and I encourage it with all my might; I ask about his work, make such suggestions as I can, and praise his successful experiments and his treatises, so far as I can understand them, loudly and liberally.
This morning one of his guardians writes to me about him. He is a country gentleman, with a large estate, who married a cousin of my pupil. He is a big, pompous, bumble-bee kind of man, who prides himself on speaking his mind, and is quite unaware that it is only his position that saves him from the plainest retorts. He writes to say that he is much exercised about his ward's progress. The boy, he says, is fanciful and delicate, and has much too good an opinion of himself. That is true; and he goes on to lay down the law as to what he "needs." He must be thrown into the society of active and vigorous boys; he must play games; he must go to the gymnasium. And then he must learn self-reliance; he must not be waited upon; he must be taught that it is his business to be considerate of others; he must learn to be obliging, and to look after other people. He goes on to say that all he wants is the influence of a strong and sensible man (that is a cut at me), and he will be obliged if I will kindly attend to the matter.
Well, what does he want me to do? Does he expect me to run races with the boy? To introduce him to the captain of the eleven? To have him thrust into teams of cricket and football from which his incapacity for all games naturally excludes him? When our bumble-bee friend was at school himself—and a horrid boy he must have been—what would he have said if a master had told him to put a big, clumsy, and incapable boy into a house cricket eleven in order to bring him out?
Then as to teaching him to be considerate, the mischief is all done in the holidays; the boy is not waited on here, and he has plenty of vigorous discipline in the kind of barrack life the boys lead. Does he expect me to march into the boy's home, and request that the boy may black his own boots and carry up the coals!
The truth is that the man has no real policy; he sees the boy's deficiencies, and liberates his mind by requesting me, as if I were a kind of tradesman, to see that they are corrected.
Of course the temptation is to write the man an acrimonious letter, and to point out the idiotic character of his suggestions. But that is worse than useless.
What I have done is to write and say that I have received his kind and sensible letter, that he has laid his finger on the exact difficulties, and that naturally I am anxious to put them straight. I then added that his own recollection of his school-days will show that one cannot help a boy in athletic or social matters beyond a certain point, that one can only see that a boy has a fair chance, and is not overlooked, but that other boys would not tolerate (and I know that he does not mean to suggest this) that a boy should be included in a team for which he is unfit, simply in order that his social life should be encouraged. I then point out that as to discipline there is no lack of it here; and that it is only at home that he is spoilt; and that I hope he will use his influence, in a region where I cannot do more than make suggestions, to minimise the evil.
The man will approve of the letter; he will think me sensible and himself extraordinarily wise.
Does that seem to you to be cynical? I don't think it is. The man is sincerely anxious for the boy's welfare, just as I am, and we had better agree than disagree. The fault of his letter is that it is stupid, and that it is offensive. The former quality I can forgive, and the latter is only stupidity in another form. He thinks in his own mind that if I am paid to educate the boy I ought to be glad of advice, that I ought to be grateful to have things that I am not likely to detect for myself pointed out by an enlightened and benevolent man.
Meanwhile I shall proceed to treat the boy on my own theory. I don't expect him to play games; I don't think that it is, humanly speaking, possible to expect a sensitive, frail boy to continue to play a game in which he only makes himself ridiculous and contemptible from first to last. Of course if a boy who is incapable of success in athletics does go on playing games perseveringly and good-humouredly, he gets a splendid training, and, as a rule, conciliates respect. But this boy could not do that.
Then I shall try to encourage the boy in any taste he may exhibit, and try to build up a real structure on these slender lines. The great point is that he shall have SOME absorbing and wholesome instinct. He will be wealthy, and in a position to gratify any whim. He is not in the least likely to do anything foolish or vicious—he has not got the animal spirits for that. I shall encourage him to take up politics; and I shall try to put into his head a desire to do something for his fellow-creatures, and not to live an entirely lonely and self-absorbed life.
I have a theory that in education it is better to encourage aptitudes than to try merely to correct deficiencies. One can't possibly extirpate weaknesses by trying to crush them. One must build up vitality and interest and capacity. It is like the parable of the evil spirits. It is of no use simply to cast them out and leave the soul empty and swept; one must encourage some strong, good spirit to take possession; one must build on the foundations that are there.
The boy is delicate-minded, able and intelligent; he is an interesting companion, when he is once at his ease. If only this busy, fussy, hearty old bore would leave him alone! What I am afraid of his doing is of his getting the boy to stay with him, making him go out hunting, and laughing mercilessly at his tumbles. The misery that a stupid, genial man can inflict upon a sensitive boy like this is dreadful to contemplate.
At the end of the half I shall write a letter about the boy's work, and delicately hint that, if he is encouraged in his subject, he may attain high distinction and eventually rise to political or scientific eminence. The old bawler will take the fly with a swirl—see if he does not! And, if I can secure an interview with him, I will wager that my triumph will be complete.
Does this all seem very dingy to you, my dear Herbert? You have never had to deal with tiresome, stupid people in a professional capacity, you see. There is a distinct pleasure in getting one's own way, in triumphing over an awkward situation, in leading an old buffer by the nose to do the thing which you think right, and to make him believe that you are all the time following his advice and treasuring up his precepts. But I can honestly say that my chief desire is not to amuse myself with this kind of diplomacy, but the real welfare of the child. I know you will believe that.—Ever yours,
T. B.
UPTON,June 25, 1904.
DEAR HERBERT,—This is not a letter; it is a sketch, an aquarelle out of my portfolio.
Yesterday was a hot, heavy, restless day, with thunder brewing in the dark heart of huge inky clouds; a day when one craves for light, and brisk airs, and cold bare hill-tops; when one desires to get away from one's kind, away from close rooms and irritable persons. So I went off on my patient and uncomplaining bicycle, along a country road; and then crossing a wide common, like the field, I thought, in the Pilgrim's Progress across which Evangelist pointed an improving finger, I turned down to the left to the waterside In the still air, that seemed to listen, the blue wooded hills across the river had a dim, rich beauty. How mysterious are the fields and heights from which one is separated by a stream, the fields in which one knows every tree and sloping lawn by sight, and where one sets foot so rarely! The road came to an end in a little grassy space among high-branching elms. On my left was a farm, with barns and byres, overhung by stately walnut trees; on the right a grange among its great trees, a low tiled house, with white casements, in a pleasant garden, full of trellised roses, a big dovecote, with a clattering flight of wheeling pigeons circling round and round. Hard by, close to the river, stands a little ancient church, with a timbered spire, the trees growing thickly about it, dreaming forgotten dreams.
Here all was still and silent; the very children moved languidly about, not knowing what ailed them. Far off across the wide-watered plain came a low muttering of thunder, and a few big drops pattered in the great elms.
This secluded river hamlet has an old history; the church, which is served from a distant parish, stands in a narrow strip of land which runs down across the fields to the river, and dates from the time when the river was a real trade-highway, and when neighbouring parishes, which had no frontages on the stream, found it convenient to have a wharf to send their produce, timber or bricks, away by water. But the wharf has long since perished, though a few black stakes show where it stood; and the village, having no landing-place and no inn, has dropped out of the river life, and minds its own quiet business.
A few paces from the church the river runs silently and strongly to the great weir below. To-day it was swollen with rain and turbid, and plucked steadily at the withies. To-day the stream, which is generally full of life, was almost deserted. But it came into my head what an allegory it made. Here through the unvisited meadows, with their huge elms, runs this thin line of glittering vivid life; you hear, hidden in dark leaves, the plash of oars, the grunt of rowlocks, and the chatter of holiday folk, to whom the river-banks are but a picture through which they pass, and who know nothing of the quiet fields that surround them. That, I thought, following a train of reflection, is like life itself, moving in its bright, familiar channel, so unaware of the broad tracts of mystery that hem it in. May there not be presences, unseen, who look down wondering—as I look to-day through my screen of leafy boughs—on the busy-peopled stream that runs so merrily between its scarped banks of clay? I know not; yet it seems as though it might be so.
Beneath the weir, with its fragrant, weedy scent, where the green river plunges and whitens through the sluices, lies a deep pool, haunted by generations of schoolboys, who wander, flannelled and straw-hatted, up through the warm meadows to bathe. In such sweet memories I have my part, when one went riverwards with some chosen friend, speaking with the cheerful frankness of boyhood of all our small concerns, and all we meant to do; and then the cool grass under the naked feet, the delicious recoil of the fresh, tingling stream, and the quiet stroll back into the ordered life so full of simple happiness.
"Ah! happy fields, ah! pleasing shade,Ah! fields beloved in vain!"
sang the sad poet of Eton—but not in vain, I think, for these old beautiful memories are not sad; the good days are over and gone, and they cannot be renewed; but they are like a sweet spring of youth, whose waters fail not, in which a tired soul may bathe and be clean again. They may bring back
"The times when I remember to have beenJoyful, and free from blame."
To be pensive, not sentimental, is the joy of later life. The thought of the sweet things that have had an end, of life lived out and irrevocable, is not a despairing thought, unless it is indulged with an unavailing regret. It is rather to me a sign that, whatever we may be or become, we are surrounded with the same quiet beauty and peace, if we will but stretch out our hands and open our hearts to it. To grow old patiently and bravely, even joyfully—that is the secret; and it is as idle to repine for the lost joys as it would have been in the former days to repine because we were not bigger and stronger and more ambitious. Life, if it does not become sweeter, becomes more interesting; fresh ties are formed, fresh paths open out; and there should come, too, a simple serenity of living, a certainty that, whatever befall, we are in wise and tender hands.
So I reasoned with myself beside the little holy church, not far from the moving stream.
But the time warned me to be going. The thunder had drawn off to the west; a faint breeze stirred and whispered in the elms. The day declined. But I had had my moment, and my heart was full; for it is such moments as these that are the pure gold of life, when the scene and the mood move together to some sweet goal in perfect unison. Sometimes the scene is there without the mood, or the mood comes and finds no fitting pasturage; but to-day, both were mine; and the thought, echoing like a strain of rich sad music, passed beyond the elms, beyond the blue hills, back to its mysterious home....
There, that is the end of my sketch; a little worked up, but substantially true. Tell me if you like the kind of thing; if you do, it is rather a pleasure to write thus occasionally. But it may seem to you to be affected, and, in that case, I won't send you any more of such reveries.
You seem very happy and prosperous; but then you like heat, and enjoy it like a lizard. My love to all of you.—Ever yours,
T. B.
UPTON,July 1, 1904.
DEAR HERBERT,—What you say about forming habits is very interesting. It is quite true that one gets very little done without a certain method; and it is equally true that, if one does manage to arrive at a certain definite programme for one's life and work, it is very easy to get a big task done. Just reflect on this fact; it would not be difficult, in any life, to so arrange things that one could write a short passage every day, say enough to fill a page of an ordinary octavo. Well, if one stuck to it, that would mean that in the course of a year one would have a volume finished. Sometimes my colleagues express surprise that I can find time for so much literary work; and on the other hand if I tell them how much time I am able to devote to it they are equally surprised that I can get anything done, because it seems so little. This is the fact; I can get an hour—possibly two—on Tuesday, two hours on Thursday, one on Friday, two on Saturday, and one or two on Sunday—nine hours a week under favourable circumstances, and never a moment more. But writing being to me the purest pleasure and refreshment, I never lose a minute in getting to work, and I use every moment of the time. That does not include reading; but by dint of having books about, and by working carefully, so that I do not need to go over the same ground twice, I get through a good deal in the week. I have trained myself, too, to be able to write at full speed when I am at work, and I can count on writing three octavo pages in an hour, or even four. The result is, as you will see, that in a term of twelve weeks, I can turn out between three and four hundred pages. The curious thing is that I do better original work in the term-time than in the holidays. I think the pressure of a good deal of mechanical work, not of an exhausting kind, clears the brain and makes it vigorous. Of course it is rather scrappy work; but I lay my plans in the holidays, make my skeleton, and work up my authorities; and so I can go ahead at full steam.
But I have strayed away from the subject of habits; and the moral of the above is only that habits are easy enough if you like the task enough. If I did not care for writing, I should find abundance of excellent reasons why I should not do it.
Pater says somewhere that forming habits is failure in life; by which I suppose he means that if one gets tied down to a petty routine of one's own, it generally ends in one's becoming petty too—narrow-minded and conventional. I don't suppose he referred to method, because he was one of the most methodical of men. He wrote down sentences that came into his mind, scattered ideas, on small cards; when he had a sufficient store of these, he sorted them and built up his essay out of them.
But I am equally aware that habit is apt to become very tyrannical indeed, if it is acquired. In my own case I have got into the habit of writing only between tea and dinner, owing to its being the only time at my disposal, so that I can hardly write at any other time; and that is inconvenient in the holidays. Moreover, I like writing so much, enjoy the shaping of sentences so intensely, that I tend to arrange my day in the holidays entirely with a view to having these particular hours free for writing; and thus for a great part of the year I lose the best and most enjoyable part of the day, the sweet summer evenings, when the tired world grows fragrant and cool.
One ought to have a routine for home life certainly; but it is not wholesome when one begins to grudge the slightest variation from the programme. I speak philosophically, because I am in the grip of the evil myself. The reason why I care so little for staying anywhere, and even for travelling, is because it disarranges my plan of the day, and I don't feel certain of being able to secure the time for writing which I love. But this is wrong; it is vivendi perdere causas, and I think we ought resolutely to court a difference of life at intervals, and to learn to bear with equanimity the suspension of one's daily habits. You are certainly wise, if you find it suits you, to secure the morning for writing. Personally my mind is not at its best then; it is dulled and weakened by sleep, and it requires the tonic of routine work and bodily exercise before it expands and flourishes.
Another grievous tendency which grows on me is an incapacity for idleness. That will amuse you, when you remember the long evenings at Eton which we used to spend in vacant talk. I remember so well your saying after tea one evening, in that poky room of yours with the barred windows at the end of the upper passage, "How delightful to think that there are four hours with nothing whatever to do!" Do you remember, too, that night when we sate at tea, blissfully, wholesomely tired after a college match? John and Ellen, those strange, gruff beings, came in to wash up, carrying that horrible, steaming can of tea-dregs in which our cups were plunged: they cleared the table as we sate; it was over before six, and it was not till the prayer-bell rang at 9.30 that we became aware we had sate the whole evening with the table between us. What DID we talk about? I wish to Heaven I could sit and talk like that now! That is another thing which grows upon me, my dislike of mere chatting: it is not priggish to say it, because I regret and abominate my stupidity in that respect. But there is nothing now which induces more rapid and more desperate physical fatigue than to sit still and know I have to pump up talk for an hour.
The moral of all this is that YOU must take good care to form habits, andImust take care to unform them. YOU must resist the temptation to read the papers, to stroll, to talk to your children; andImust try to cultivate leisurely propensities. I think that, as a schoolmaster, one might do very good work as a peripatetic talker. I have a big garden here—to think that you have never seen it!—with a great screen of lilacs and some pleasant gravel walks. I never enter it, I am afraid. But if in the pleasant summer I could learn the art of sitting there, of having tea there, and making a few boys welcome if they cared to come, it would be good for all of us, and would give the boys some pleasant memories. I don't think there is anything gives me a pleasanter thrill than to recollect the times I spent as a boy in old Hayward's garden. He told me and Francis Howard that we might go and sit there if we liked. You were not invited, and I never dared to ask him. It was a pleasant little place, with a lawn surrounded with trees, and a summer-house full of armchairs, with an orchard behind it—now built over. Howard and I used at one time to go there a good deal, to read and talk. I remember him reading Shakespeare's sonnets aloud, though I had not an idea what they were all about—but his rich, resonant voice comes back to me now; and then he showed me a MS. book of his own poems. Ye Gods, how great I thought them! I copied many of them out and have them still. Hayward used to come strolling about; I can see him standing there in a big straw hat, with his hands behind him, like the jolly old leisurely fellow he was. "Don't get up, boys," he used to say. Once or twice he sate with us, and talked lazily about some book we were reading. He never took any trouble to entertain us, but I used to feel that we were welcome, and that it really pleased him that we cared to come. Now he lives in a suburb, on a pension: why do I never go to see him?
"La, Perry, how yer do run on!" as the homely Warden's wife said to the voluble Chaplain. I never meant to write you such a letter; but I am glad indeed to find you really settling down. We must cultivate our garden, as Voltaire said; and I only wish that the garden of my own spirit were more full of "shelter and fountains," and less stocked with long rows of humble vegetables; but there are a few flowers here and there.—Ever yours,
T. B.
MONK'S ORCHARD, UPTON,July 11, 1904.
MY DEAR HERBERT,—I am going to pour out a pent-up woe. I have just escaped from a very fatiguing experience. I said good-bye this morning, with real cordiality, to a thoroughly uncongenial and disagreeable visitor. You will probably be surprised when I tell you his name, because he is a popular, successful, and, many people hold, a very agreeable man. It is that ornament of the Bar, Mr. William Welbore, K.C. His boy is in my house; and Mr. Welbore (who is a widower) invited himself to stay a Sunday with me in the tone of one who, if anything, confers a favour. I had no real reason for refusing, and, to speak truth, any evasion on my part would have been checked by the boy.
It is a fearful bore here to have any one staying in the house at all, unless he is so familiar an old friend that you can dispense with all ceremony. I have no guest-rooms to speak of; and a guest is always in my study when I want to be there, talking when I want to work, or wanting to smoke at inconvenient times. One's study is also one's office; boys keep dropping in, and, when I have an unperceptive guest, I have to hold interviews with boys wherever I can—in passages and behind doors. What made it worse was that it was a wet Sunday, so that my visitor sate with me all day, and I have no doubt thought he was enlivening a dull professional man with some full-flavoured conversation. Then one has to arrange for separate meals; when I am alone I never, as you know, have dinner, but go in to the boys' supper and have a slice of cold meat. But on this occasion I had to have a dinner-party on Saturday and another on Sunday; and the breakfast hour, when I expect to read letters and the paper, was taken up with general conversation. I am ashamed to think how much discomposed I was; but a schoolmaster is practically always on duty. I wonder how Mr. Welbore would have enjoyed the task of entertaining me for a day or two in his chambers! But one ought not, I confess, to be so wedded to one's own habits; and I feel, when I complain, rather like the rich gentleman who said to John Wesley, when his fire smoked, "These are some of the crosses, Mr. Wesley, that I have to bear."
I could have stood it with more equanimity if only Mr. Welbore had been a congenial guest. But even in the brief time at my disposal I grew to dislike him with an intensity of which I am ashamed. I hated his clothes, his boots, his eye-glass, the way he cleared his throat, the way he laughed. He is a successful, downright, blunt, worldly man, and is generally called a good fellow by his friends. He arrived in time for tea on Saturday; he talked about his boy a little; the man is in this case, unlike Wordsworth's hero, the father of the child; and the boy will grow up exactly like him. Young Welbore does his work punctually and without interest; he plays games respectably; he likes to know the right boys; he is not exactly disagreeable, but he derides all boys who are in the least degree shy, stupid, or unconventional. He is quite a little man of the world, in fact. Well, I don't like that type of creature, and I tried to indicate to the father that I thought the boy was rather on the wrong lines. He heard me with impatience, as though I was bothering him about matters which belonged to my province; and he ended by laughing, not very agreeably, and saying: "Well, you don't seem to have much of a case against Charlie; he appears to be fairly popular. I confess that I don't much go in for sentiment in education; if a boy does his work, and plays his games, and doesn't get into trouble, I think he is on the right lines." And then he paid me an offensive compliment: "I hear you make the boys very comfortable, and I am sure I am obliged to you for taking so much interest in him." He then went off for a little to see the boy. He appeared at dinner, and I had invited two or three of the most intelligent of my colleagues. Mr. Welbore simply showed off. He told stories; he made mirthless legal jokes. One of my colleagues, Patrick, a man of some originality, ventured to dispute an opinion of Mr. Welbore's, and Mr. Welbore turned him inside out, by a series of questions, as if he was examining a witness, in a good-natured, insolent way, and ended by saying: "Well, Mr. Patrick, that sort of thing wouldn't do in a law-court, you know; you would have to know your subject better than that." I was not surprised, after dinner, at the alacrity with which my colleagues quitted the scene, on all sorts of professional excuses. Then Mr. Welbore sate up till midnight, smoking strong cigars, and giving me his ideas on the subject of education. That was a bitter pill, for he worsted me in every argument I undertook.
Sunday was a nightmare day; every spare moment was given up to Mr. Welbore. I breakfasted with him, took him to chapel, took him to the boys' luncheon, walked with him, sate with him, talked with him. The strain was awful. The man sees everything from a different point of view to my own. One ought to be able to put up with that, of course, and I don't at all pretend that I consider my point of view better than his; but I had to endure the consciousness that he thought his own point of view in all respects superior to mine. He thought me a slow-coach, an old maid, a sentimentalist; and I had, too, the galling feeling that on the whole he approved of a drudge like myself taking a rather priggish point of view, and that he did not expect a schoolmaster to be a man of the world, any more than he would have expected a curate or a gardener to be. I felt that the man was in his way a worse prig even than I was, and even more of a Pharisee, because he judged everything by a certain conventional standard. His idea of life was a place where you found out what was the right thing to do; and that if you did that, money and consideration, the only two things worth having, followed as a matter of course. "Of course he's not my sort," was the way in which he dismissed almost the only person we discussed whom I thoroughly admired. So we went on; and I can only say that the relief I felt when I saw him drive away on Monday morning was so great as almost to make it worth while having endured his visit. I think he rather enjoyed himself—at least he threatened to pay me another visit; and I am sure he had the benevolent consciousness of having brought a breath of the big world into a paltry life. The big world! what a terrible place it would be if it was peopled by Welbores! My only consolation is that men of his type don't achieve the great successes. They are very successful up to a certain point; they get what they want. Welbore will be a judge before long, and he has already made a large fortune. But there is a demand for more wisdom and generosity in the great places—at least I hope so. Welbore's idea of the world is a pleasant place where such men as he can make money and have a good time. He thinks art, religion, beauty, poetry, music, all stuff. I would not mind that if only he did not KNOW it was stuff. God forbid that we should pretend to enjoy such things if we do not—and, after all, the man is not a hypocrite. But his view is that any one who is cut in a different mould is necessarily inferior; and what put the crowning touch to my disgust was that on Sunday afternoon we met a Cabinet Minister, who is a great student of literature. He talked about books to Mr. Welbore, and Mr. Welbore heard him with respect, because the Minister was in the swim. He said afterwards to me that people's foibles were very odd; but he so far respected the Minister's success as to think that he had a right to a foible. He would have crushed one of my colleagues who had battled in the same way, with a laugh and a few ugly words.
Well, let me dismiss Mr. Welbore from my mind. The worst of it is that, though I don't agree with him, he has cast a sort of blight on my mind. It is as though I had seen him spit on the face of a statue that I loved. I don't like vice in any shape; but I equally dislike a person who has a preference for manly vices over sentimental ones; and the root of Mr. Welbore's dislike of vice is simply that it tends to interfere with the hard sort of training which is necessary for success.
Mr. Welbore, as a matter of fact, seems to me really to augur worse for the introduction of the kingdom of heaven upon earth than any number of drunkards and publicans. One feels that the world is so terribly strong, stronger even than sin; and what is worse, there seems to be so little in the scheme of things that could ever give Mr. Welbore the lie.—Ever yours,
T. B
UPTON,July 16, 1904.
DEAR HERBERT,—I declare that the greatest sin there is in the world is stupidity. The character that does more harm in the world than any other is the character in which stupidity and virtue are combined. I grow every day more despondent about the education we give at our so-called classical schools. Here, you know, we are severely classical; and to have to administer such a system is often more than I can bear with dignity or philosophy. One sees arrive here every year a lot of brisk, healthy boys, with fair intelligence, and quite disposed to work; and at the other end one sees depart a corresponding set of young gentlemen who know nothing, and can do nothing, and are profoundly cynical about all intellectual things. And this is the result of the meal of chaff we serve out to them week after week; we collect it, we chop it up, we tie it up in packets; we spend hours administering it in teaspoons, and this is the end. I am myself the victim of this kind of education; I began Latin at seven and Greek at nine, and, when I left Cambridge, I did not know either of them well. I could not sit in an arm-chair and read either a Greek or a Latin book, and I had no desire to do it. I knew a very little French, a very little mathematics, a very little science; I knew no history, no German, no Italian. I knew nothing of art or music; my ideas of geography were childish. And yet I am decidedly literary in my tastes, and had read a lot of English for myself. It is nothing short of infamous that any one should, after an elaborate education, have been so grossly uneducated. My only accomplishment was the writing of rather pretty Latin verse.
And yet this preposterous system continues year after year. I had an animated argument with some of the best of my colleagues the other day about it. I cannot tell you how profoundly irritating these wiseacres were. They said all the stock things—that one must lay a foundation, and that it could only be laid by using the best literatures; that Latin was essential because it lay at the root of so many other languages; and Greek, because there the human intellect had reached its high-water mark,—"and it has such a noble grammar," one enthusiastic Grecian said; that an active-minded person could do all the rest for himself. It was in vain to urge that in many cases the whole foundation was insecure; and that all desire to raise a superstructure was eliminated. My own belief is that Greek and Latin are things to be led up to, not begun with; that they are hard, high literatures, which require an initiation to comprehend; and that one ought to go backwards in education, beginning with what one knows.
It seems to me, to use a similitude, that the case is thus. If one lives in a plain and wishes to reach a point upon a hill, one must make a road from the plain upwards. It will be a road at the base, it will be a track higher up, and a path at last, used only by those who have business there. But the classical theorists seem to me to make an elaborate section of macadamised road high in the hills, and, having made it, to say that the people who like can make their own road in between.
How would I mend all this? Well, I would change methods in the first place. If one wanted to teach a boy French or German effectively, so that he would read and appreciate, one would dispense with much of the grammar, except what was absolutely necessary. In the case of classics it is all done the other way; grammar is a subject in itself; boys have to commit to memory long lists of words and forms which they never encounter; they have to acquire elaborate analyses of different kinds of usages, which are of no assistance in dealing with the language itself. It is beginning with the wrong end of the stick. Grammar is the scientific or philosophical theory of language; it may be an interesting and valuable study for a mind of strong calibre, but it does not help one to understand an author or to appreciate a style.
Then, too, I would sweep away for all but boys of special classical ability most kinds of composition. Fancy teaching a boy side by side with the elements of German or French to compose German and French verse, heroic, Alexandrine, or lyrical! The idea has only to be stated to show its fatuity. I would teach boys to write Latin prose, because it is a tough subject, and it initiates them into the process of disentangling the real sense of the English copy. But I would abolish all Latin verse composition, and all Greek composition of every kind for mediocre boys. Not only would they learn the languages much faster, but there would be a great deal of time saved as well. Then I would abolish the absurd little lessons, with the parsing, and I would at all hazards push on till they could read fluently.
Of course the above improvement of methods is sketched on the hypothesis that both Greek and Latin are retained. Personally I would retain Latin for most, but give up Greek altogether in the majority of cases. I would teach all boys French thoroughly. I would try to make them read and write it easily, and that should be the linguistic staple of their education. Then I would teach them history, mainly modern English history, and modern geography; a very little mathematics and elementary science. Such boys would be, in my belief, well-educated; and they would never be tempted to disbelieve in the usefulness of their education.
When I propound these ideas, my colleagues talk of soft options, and of education without muscle or nerve. My retort is that the majority of boys educated on classical lines are models of intellectual debility as it is. They are uninterested, cynical, and they cannot even read or write the languages which they have been so carefully taught.
What I want is experiment of every kind; but my cautious friends say that one would only get something a great deal worse. That I deny. I maintain that it is impossible to have anything worse, and that the majority of the boys we turn out are intellectually in so negative a condition that any change would be an improvement.
But I effect nothing; nothing is attempted, nothing done. I do my best—fortunately our system admits of that—to teach my private pupils a little history, and I make them write essays. The results are decidedly encouraging; but meanwhile my colleagues go on in the old ways, quite contented, pathetically conscientious, laboriously slaving away, and apparently not disquieted by results.
I am very near the end of my tether—one cannot go on for ever administering a system in which one has lost all faith. If there were signs of improvement I should be content. If our headmaster would even insist upon the young men whom he appoints obtaining a competent knowledge of French and German before they come here it would be something, because then, when the change is made, there would be less friction. But even a new headmaster with liberal ideas would now be hopelessly hampered by the fact that he would have a staff who could not teach modern subjects at all, who knew nothing but classics, and classics only for teaching purposes.
It does me good to pour out my woes to you; I feel my position most acutely at this time of year, when the serious business of the place is cricket. In cricket the boys are desperately and profoundly interested, not so much in the game, as in the social rewards of playing it well. And my worthy colleagues give themselves to athletics with an earnestness which depresses me into real dejection. One meets a few of these beloved men at dinner; a few half-hearted remarks are made about politics and books; a good deal of vigorous gossip is talked; but if a question as to the best time for net-practice, or the erection of a board for the purpose of teaching slip-catches is mentioned, a profound seriousness falls on the group. A man sits up in his chair and speaks with real conviction and heat, with grave gestures. "The afternoon," he says, "is NOT a good time for nets; the boys are not at their best, and the pros. are less vigorous after their dinner. Whatever arrangements are made as to the times for school, the evening MUST be given up to nets."
The result is a pedantry, a priggishness, a solemnity about games which is simply deplorable. The whole thing seems to me to be distorted and out of proportion. I am one of those feeble people to whom exercise is only a pleasure and a recreation. If I don't like a game I don't play it. I do not see why I should be bored by my recreations. An immense number of boys are bored by their games, but they dare not say so because public opinion is so strong. As the summer goes on they avail themselves of every excuse to give up the regular games; and almost the only boys who persevere are boys who are within reach of some coveted "colour," which gives them social importance. What I desire is that boys should be serious about their work in a practical, business-like way, and amused by their games. As a matter of fact they are serious about games and profoundly bored by their work. The work is a relief from the tension of games, and if it were wholly given up, and games were played from morning to night, many boys would break down under the strain. I don't expect all the boys to be enthusiastic about their work; all healthily constituted people prefer play to work, I myself not least. But I want them to believe in it and to be interested in it, in the way that a sensible professional man is interested in his work. What produces the cynicism about work so common in classical schools is that the work is of a kind which does not seem to lead anywhere, and classics are a painful necessity which the boys intend to banish from their mind as soon as they possibly can.
This is a melancholy jeremiad, I am well aware; but it is also a frame of mind which grows upon me; and, to come back to my original proposition, it is the stupidity of virtuous men which is responsible for the continuance of this arid, out-of-joint system.—Ever yours,
T. B.