A SCHOOLMASTER'S
DIARY
"_The man who looks at this view, for the first time, with the naked
eye, sees far more of it than the man who looks at it for the hundredth
time through smoked glasses. Experience is the smoke on the glasses;
it's the curse of our profession. We are all much more efficient
when we're young than we ever are afterwards. Give me the young and
inexperienced man._"--"The Lanchester Tradition."
A SCHOOLMASTER'S
DIARY
BEING EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL
OF PATRICK TRAHERNE, M.A., SOMETIME
ASSISTANT MASTER AT RADCHESTER AND
MARLTON
SELECTED AND EDITED BY
S. P. B. MAIS
LONDON
GRANT RICHARDS LTD
ST. MARTIN'S STREET
MCMXVIII
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN AT
THE COMPLETE PRESS
WEST NORWOOD
LONDON
TO
ELSPETH TRAHERNE
WITHOUT WHOSE VALUABLE HELP I SHOULD
HAVE BEEN TOTALLY AT A LOSS WHAT TO
INCLUDE AND WHAT TO OMIT
IN MEMORY OF
PATRICK
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR 9
THE DIARY:
I. SEPTEMBER 20 TO DECEMBER 31, 1909 21
II. JANUARY 20 TO APRIL 3, 1910 37
III. MARCH 4 TO JULY 31, 1910 54
IV. AUGUST 10 TO SEPTEMBER 15, 1910 72
V. OCTOBER 1, 1910, TO JANUARY 15, 1911 92
VI. MARCH 3 TO MAY 4, 1911 107
VII. JUNE 4 TO AUGUST 1, 1911 124
VIII. AUGUST 10 TO SEPTEMBER 26, 1911 145
IX. OCTOBER 13, 1911, TO JANUARY 19, 1912 151
X. FEBRUARY 23 TO JULY 29, 1912 163
XI. AUGUST 12 TO DECEMBER 20, 1912 180
XII. DECEMBER 31, 1912, TO JUNE 11, 1913 196
XIII. JULY 9 TO SEPTEMBER 19, 1913 211
XIV. OCTOBER 4 TO DECEMBER 16, 1913 218
XV. JANUARY 13 TO JULY 24, 1914 232
XVI. SEPTEMBER 17, 1914, TO MAY 4, 1915 244
XVII. JULY 31, 1915, TO APRIL 3, 1916 256
XVIII. MAY 4, 1916, TO APRIL 3, 1917 270
APPENDIX 289
PROLOGUE--MODERN SHELL: TO-DAY 291
EPILOGUE--MODERN SHELL: TO-MORROW 307
INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR
Patrick Traherne, only son of the Rev. Thomas Traherne of North Darley
Vicarage, Derbyshire, was born on July 14, 1885. He was educated
at Rugby and New College, Oxford, and immediately upon leaving the
University he became a Public School master.
I well remember my first meeting with him. It was during my first
term at Oxford. I had been reading "Centuries of Meditations" and in
particular this passage, which I cannot refrain from quoting, because
to it I owe my friendship with Patrick:
"Your enjoyment of the world is never right till every morning you
wake in Heaven; see yourself in your Father's Palace: and look upon
the skies, the earth, and the air, as Celestial Joys; you never enjoy
the world aright till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you
are clothed with the heavens and crowned with the stars: and perceive
yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so,
because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you.
Till you can sing and rejoice and delight in God as misers do in gold,
and kings in sceptres, you never enjoy the world. Till your spirit
filleth the whole world and the stars are your jewels: till you are as
familiar with the ways of God in all ages as with your walk and table:
till you love men so as to desire their happiness with a thirst equal
to the zeal of your own, you never enjoy the world. You never enjoy
the world aright, till you so love the beauty of enjoying it that
you are covetous and earnest to persuade others to enjoy it. There is
so much blindness and ingratitude and damned folly in it. The world
is a mirror of infinite Beauty, yet no man sees it. It is a Temple of
Majesty, yet no man regards it. It is the paradise of God, the place
of Angels and the Gate of Heaven."
I remember rushing, book in hand, late at night to Stapleton's rooms
(Stapleton was a school-friend of mine, who had come up with me that
term) and reading it to him as one of the finest things I had ever
chanced upon. After I had finished I noticed that he was not alone;
sitting in a far corner, in the depths of a 'Varsity chair, I now saw
a fair-haired, fresh-faced undergraduate whom I had not up till that
moment met. He broke in upon my enthusiastic discovery. "I am glad
you like that," he began. "It is not very well known yet. The author
of that book, Thomas Traherne, was an ancestor of mine: my name is
Traherne too."
Somehow from that evening I have always associated Patrick with that
glowing passage. We became fast friends and for the four years we were
at Oxford, Stapleton, Traherne and I spent all our spare time together.
We were known, for some obscure reason, as "The Three Musketeers."
We were none of us brilliant scholars, but we were deeply interested in
the problems of life: we read a good deal in a desultory sort of way,
but our main occupation was athletics. We all played football, tennis,
hockey, and cricket, and managed to put in some time with the Beagles
and on the track. On Sundays we used to roam far and wide over the
country round Oxford: we were all lovers of Nature and (I venture to
think) in every way quite ordinary undergraduates. Stapleton was taking
orders, while Traherne and I meant to be schoolmasters. We were jovial
and irresponsible in those days and certainly did not take ourselves
seriously. We were not in the habit of getting drunk, but we were
certainly not less rowdy than the majority of the men of our time: we
enjoyed life to the full. In the "vacs" we would stay with one another
in London in order to go the round of the theatres, or we would set out
on walking tours through Wales or Devonshire.
I met Traherne's people a good deal. They were quite delightful,
simple-minded folk, who took life as it came and always managed to see
the comic side of everything. I know no house where peals upon peals
of laughter were so frequent as in that vicarage of North Darley. Our
four years at Oxford passed all too quickly. The other two managed to
get a second class in their finals, I just scraped a third. We then
separated, swearing however that nothing should really separate us. We
wrote frequently and at great length to one another and tried to meet
whenever possible. Gradually, however, we made new friends and were
seized with different interests and somehow we became less regular in
our correspondence and our meetings. It was not that we had ceased
to care for each other, still less that "out of sight" was "out of
mind"--I have never loved any man as I loved Traherne, but nevertheless
we got out of touch.
I settled down quite happily to my job at Winchborough and became the
stereotyped sort of plodding schoolmaster, while Stapleton passed from
one curacy to another and finally had the good fortune to secure a
living near London. So time went on. Then I began to notice Traherne's
name in the papers. He had entered on his career as a writer. He was
always indefatigable, though how he found time both to teach and to
write I don't know. First of all he edited school books, then he wrote
articles for the educational papers; soon I saw his name attached to
critical papers in the magazines and reviews: he wrote middle-page
articles for the daily press and short stories. Later I saw the
announcement of a book by him, closely followed by another and then a
third.
Naturally all this interested me a good deal. If he would not write to
me I still could follow his career through his books.
I must say, however, that I was slightly startled at the attitude he
adopted in his writings. When I knew him he was the cheeriest and most
modest of men. From his writings the casual reader would imagine him
to be a red-hot fire-brand, launching out against all the accepted
codes by which we live. His method was that of "cock-shying" at a lot
of "Aunt Sallies." He denounced everything, religion as at present
practised, education, root and branch, the current codes of morality,
the laws, politics--everything. There was a frightful acerbity in his
language. One could detect the same boyish ardour which was the finest
thing about him if one looked carefully and read between the lines,
but his judgments were amazingly ill-considered. He seemed to lose all
control of himself when he took up his pen. I wrote to remonstrate but
he rarely replied, and when he did he would alternately change from a
tone of humble apology to one of insolent contempt. It was easy to see
that he was suffering from some appalling malady, a restlessness which
threatened to destroy all the good that he was so anxious to do. At
last the inevitable climax came: in a piteous letter he wrote to tell
me that after eight years he had been ignominiously turned out, and
that his career as a schoolmaster was at an end. From the language he
used I feared lest he might be contemplating suicide, but his wife (who
is one of the most charming women I have ever met and to whom he owes
more than even he will ever realize) kept him from that.
On the other hand, there seemed to be considerable danger of his
losing his reason. I went down to see him: I never saw a man so
altered: he was completely broken. I sat up with him all through one
night while he told me the whole story. It appears that he created
enemies through his tactlessness wherever he went. Boys on the whole
I should say, from what he said, understood him more or less, his
peers not at all. He was always discontented with the average, always
demanding an instant millennium. The war crushed him, the wretched
estate of the poorer classes crushed him, the lack of intelligence
among the country people with whom he lived crushed him, his
colleagues' complacence that "all was for the best in the best of
all possible worlds" crushed him. Poor devil, he must have suffered
frightfully. He seemed abnormally sensitive. The least thing set him
off: he always suspected that he had no sympathizers: he consistently
managed to alienate those who really were trying their best to help him.
All through that night on which he poured out his soul to me I saw
exactly how impossible it was for him to work in conjunction with any
ordinary body of schoolmasters. What they denounced as disloyalty
was with him honesty; he was so ferociously energetic that he could
never rest: he must have his windmill to tilt against. There was no
doubt that he was finding his break with Public School life very real
tragedy. He was incapable of looking forward to anything else. I did
my best to console him, to show him that life was only just beginning
for him: but he swept away all the crumbs of consolation I produced and
only just before I was leaving did he suggest any way in which I could
help him. "I have besmirched my reputation," he said mournfully. "I
can't clear myself. Will you try?"
"Of course I will, but how?" I replied.
"Take these," he said, suddenly producing five stout volumes. "Here
is my diary for the last eight years. Go through it and select such
passages as you think fit and show the world exactly what manner of man
I was: 'Speak of me as I am: nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in
malice; then must you speak of one that loved not wisely but too well,'
just the bare truth. Justice is what I want, not charity."
It was the least I could do ... and now for some months I have been
engaged upon this strange task. Even now I am afraid I have failed.
These diaries were so incoherent, so much prominence was given to
irrelevant matter, so little to the thousand things I wanted to know,
but I have kept my promise, and this book is the result. I wish he
could have lived to see it in the hands of the public who so misjudged
him.
It is easy to see the tenets which Traherne held most dear: he looked
upon education as the saving grace of a nation or an individual. The
object of education with him was to develop imagination and sympathy,
so that all men in the future should realize the value of Truth and
Beauty, and be tolerant of other men's opinions. To this end he
endeavoured to make his boys realize the importance of making the most
of their brains: he rated the intellect highest of all.
He laid it down as a fundamental principle that each boy should be
encouraged to be strongly individual and I don't think he quite
realized the dangers which individualism brings in its wake. He hated
tradition unless it could be proved that it served some useful purpose:
he was averse from all forms of ceremonial. Consequently he set his
face against the cult of "Bloodism." He does not seem in his diary at
any rate to have dwelt on the humorous side of his colleagues: there
is very little description of the vagaries of different masters, which
I have found so extraordinarily amusing among my own acquaintances in
usherdom.
He laid immense stress on the teaching of English and encouraged his
boys to read omnivorously; by this means alone, he said, could they be
expected to learn.
Where he failed most of all was in his inability to suffer fools
gladly: he hated "sloppy" work either in colleague or boy; if he had
only kept his hatred to himself, it might have been all right, but he
was too honest, too impetuous. He would blurt out his natural feelings
everywhere and expect everybody to see his point of view at once.
Considering all things his colleagues were in some ways extremely
long-suffering, for he was so sensitive that out of sheer nervousness
and ineffectual anger he would show his worst side and hide his better
nature. He must have seemed to those who only knew him superficially to
be one mass of contradictions.
Take, for instance, his reading. He seems to have read everything of
any note that appeared during these eight years, but his judgments
on current writers are ludicrous: he hails any new-comer as a great
genius, and yet at the same time he had a nice and exact taste in
English literature and in talking could tell you just the strong and
weak points of all big writers. In his written criticism he seems to
have no standards at all. As he himself says, he was like a motor-car
without brakes. His motor-power was very high, but he had no control
over it: consequently he was always running away with himself and
finishing up with incredible smashes whenever he started out on a
literary or educational excursion.
I have been going through his letters to me of late, but I have not
found any clue in them to the mania which has led to his downfall.
In the diary, on the other hand, he lets himself go; the constant
friction, the unrealized ideals find expression: on the surface,
in his letters to his friends, he was charmingly lighthearted and
humorous. One would never suspect the _sæva indignatio_ which was
ultimately to be his undoing, in anything but his published works.
I never met a man who was so different in his person from what you
would expect after reading his books. To meet him at a dinner-party in
London, to accompany him on a walking-tour, to play games with him,
you would never guess that he had a care in the world. He seemed to
enjoy life much in the same way as his great ancestor, the mystic,
did. He was very devout, it is true, but his Christianity was of the
optimistic Chestertonian sort, a kind of prizefighter's epicureanism,
"Eat, drink, and be merry, but for the Lord's sake be careful not to
get flabby." But suddenly, not so much in the holidays as in term time,
some luckless creature would quite innocently introduce the topics of
Socialism, Liberty, Religion, Morals, or Education, and at once Patrick
would flush scarlet, stamp up and down his rooms and call down fire
from Heaven on every existing institution. I never came across such
an iconoclast. We who knew him understood that his frenzy was simply
the burning ardour of the reformer who refuses to compromise: he was
convinced that certain ideals were right and could not understand why
the rest of mankind did not immediately forsake their old gods when he
propagated his gospel of the new ones. Because he attempted to treat
the boys with whom he came into contact as his intellectual equals, and
never snubbed them, never punished or rewarded them, he expected every
other master to employ the same methods.
"Show 'em," he would say, "that they've jolly well got to work if
they want to get anything out of life; tell 'em that if they work to
please a master, to avoid the cane, to secure a trumpery prize, or for
any other reason than that work is a good thing in itself, they are
committing an immoral and indecent act, and then there's just a chance
that the intellect may grow. Not one boy in five hundred even uses ten
per cent. of his brain-cells: the average man or boy has no idea of
what real work means."
He kept a most valuable notebook in which he jotted down any views that
commended themselves to him out of all the books on education that
appeared.
I loved Patrick more than any friend I have ever had. I am a poor
counsel for the defence for that very reason. I am more likely to do
harm to his cause than good by lauding him in this way: my duty is
to let his diary tell its own tale. It is a document over which I
would fain dwell at great length and explain to you, but that would
only serve to show that I feared your verdict. I send it out to the
world with much trepidation lest I should even now have so hacked and
curtailed it that it fails to show Traherne in his true character, but
I have this at least to comfort me. There will be but few of those
who already belong to the noblest profession in the world or who are
shortly to join it who will not derive help from the light it sheds on
a most difficult task.
The schoolmaster of the new age needs all the assistance he can get.
Patrick Traherne destroyed himself in discovering what he here gives to
the world, but the results of his discoveries may be more far-reaching
than he knew.
He was one of those who are never happy unless they are fighting;
the end once attained he would be lost. It may well be that the
Stevensonian maxim which was always so much in his mind carried him
through even at his last moments (he was killed in the battle of
Cambrai, December 3, 1917), "After all to travel hopefully is a better
thing than to arrive." His failure may be a better augury than success
would have been, for in the end of all, have not the world's failures
been most frequently the world's redeemers?
I would add further that I cannot bring myself to accede to all his
dicta. Had he been permitted to live, experience would have surely
shown him that his youthful judgments are not infrequently grossly
unfair; but I maintain that his theories are not necessarily less
interesting because they are, in many cases, erroneous.
S. P. B. M.
_The names both of people and places mentioned in this book are
entirely fictitious. Patrick Traherne did not portray any specific
Public School or living person in his diary._
THE BEGINNING (1909). P. T. quoting William Blake:
_I will not cease from mental fight
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land._
THE END (1917). P. T. quoting T. W. H. Crosland:
_If I should ever be in England's thought
After I die,
Say, "There were many things he might have bought
And did not buy._
_"Unhonoured by his fellows he grew old
And trod the path to hell,
But there were many things he might have sold
And did not sell."_
I
_September 20, 1909_
It is very strange and frightening: all the boys seem to me to be
grown men and I, a veritable minnow in a sea of Tritons, but I suppose
really they are quite bovine and regard me much as cows regard human
beings--as their natural master. I wonder! I confess I am in a panic
about my ability to keep order. On several nights in the "vac" I had
nightmares of classes of unruly boys refusing to obey me, shouting,
throwing things about and generally making nuisances of themselves and
a fool of me.
My first impressions of Radchester are not very comforting. It is like
coming to a desert island to be pitchforked out at a wayside station
miles from anywhere, with only the sea to the east, and flat dike-lands
to the west, north, and south. There are no houses within sight.
Certainly there is nothing to distract one's attention from one's duty:
outside the lodge gates all is barren.
The first thing for me to do is to furnish my rooms. Alas, where am I
to procure the means to do this?
At present in my sitting-room there is nothing but a frayed carpet,
a few rickety chairs, a table, unstable on its legs, and an enormous
bookcase and cupboard combined. My bedroom is ugly, bare and damp, with
no fireplace. Apparently they encourage us to be Spartan in our mode
of living here. How different from the Oxford of three months ago.
I had a long talk with the Head Master to-night. He is an
imposing-looking man, a sound disciplinarian I should imagine, one who
gives no quarter. It is hard to associate him with the priesthood.
He has less of the clergyman in him than any parson I have ever met.
He gave me many "tips" about my work and laid stress in every other
sentence about the necessity of exercising firmness from the start.
He obviously looks upon me as willing, but lacking in experience and
scholarship. I appear to have been selected rather on athletic than
intellectual grounds. My "Blue" has gained for me this important post
and I am evidently expected to play games daily. Well, I shan't mind
that; I cannot conceive how men exist without daily exercise. Thank
Heaven, I'm not in an office. After all, £150 a year and my "keep" is
quite an adequate salary for a man of twenty-four without encumbrances.
There is something monastic about the life here: only one other master
except the Chief is married: women are obviously not encouraged.
The staff live for the most part in Common Room: we breakfast and dine
there, have lunch in the School Dining Hall with the boys, and have tea
in our own rooms.
I got my first impressions of my colleagues at dinner to-night. Most
of them were very hilarious and good-humoured, full of talk about the
Alps, Scotland, Cornwall, cricket tours, golf, climbs, bathing, fishing
and every sort of outdoor pursuit in which they had indulged during the
last eight weeks. They were all obviously glad to see each other and be
back at work.
Somehow they didn't strike me as being typical "ushers" at all. Quite
a dozen of them appear to be men about my own age, healthy, jovial and
without a care. One or two of the older men look haggard and wan, but
then again others look like prosperous gentlemen-farmers or country
squires, hale, hearty, well fed and contented.
After dinner Hallows, who is games master (an old captain of the Oxford
"Rugger" team), asked me to his rooms: some half-dozen of us sat there
drinking whisky and smoking until chapel-time. They were all genial
and friendly and we talked mainly about historic incidents in bygone
Inter-University matches.
In chapel I saw the whole school for the first time. I was exceedingly
nervous and imagined myself to be the cynosure of all eyes. I thought
that they were all taking stock of me and sizing me up. I must remember
to be strict from the very beginning. The start is everything.
_September 27, 1909_
I am gradually getting used to the routine. Certainly the breaking of
the ice was very trying. Luckily I had prepared my lessons carefully
before I went into form, so I had plenty to say, which prevented my
extreme nervousness from being too apparent, and I punished two boys
heavily for talking while I was trying to teach. On the whole most
of them appear to be tractable. What does amaze me is their abysmal
ignorance.
For the first few days I was talking over their heads the whole time.
In mathematics I went too fast. In English I took it for granted that
they knew something about the subject: I am gradually finding out that
they know nothing. What is worse, only a very few of them want to know
anything. They exhaust all their energies and keenness on games: they
have none left for work. It is looked upon as a gross breach of good
form to take anything but the most perfunctory interest in class. I
find that I am falling into the most insidious of traps. I am picking
out favourites. There are two boys, Benbow and Illingworth, both in my
English set, who have shown up essays quite outside the common: they
care about things: they read: they express a novel point of view: they
are rebels against tradition. I have given them the run of my rooms and
implored them to borrow what books they like from my shelves and to
come to tea whenever they like.
I am beginning to find that I prefer the company of boys to that of my
colleagues. Most of the staff seem to have reached the limit of their
learning when they took their Finals. My Finals only served to show
me what an ignorant ass I am. Perhaps it's a good thing to take a low
class in "schools." At any rate it leaves you under no false impression
as to your own level of intelligence and attainments.
A week of this life has taught me quite a number of useful things:
(1) That it is quite easy to keep order. A number of men here get
persistently "ragged," but that seems to me to be due to their lack of
humour, their uncertain temper, and their misunderstanding of the boy
mind.
(2) I hate having to correct work at night. It is merely a mechanical
drudgery and does the boy no good, for he does not strive to understand
a mistake unless you correct it while he is with you, and one would
be far better employed reading. Correction of exercises must have been
instituted to prevent masters from getting into mischief in their idle
hours.
(3) I dislike compulsory chapel. I like services when I do not feel
bound to go: they become merely a meaningless jingle of words when one
is forced to attend when one is not in the mood.
(4) I love playing "footer" with the House every day. I have got to
know already quite intimately a number of boys whom I should have
regarded as wasters in form. This seems to me to prove that a master
should share so far as he can in every activity in order to try to get
at the point of view of the boys from every angle. I have therefore
joined the Corps, the Debating Society and the Choir.
(5) I object intensely to the mark system. It inculcates selfishness,
destroys any chance of getting any co-operative spirit in a form, and
is thoroughly immoral. It tends to make boys work from a mercenary
motive: they think of nothing but rewards and punishments: they even
cheat when they get the chance in order to rise to a high place in the
week's order. These orders bother me. Every Saturday night we have to
collect all sorts of marks from other masters, scale and readjust them
and produce an order, which takes up about two hours of valuable time.
I don't mind giving up time to any useful end, but I do resent doing so
for a senseless one.
_November 1909_
The monastic system is getting on my nerves. I find myself longing to
hear a baby crying, a girl laughing, or any noises of the street. We
are too much aloof from the outside world. I thought reading would be
a sufficient antidote. Most of my colleagues don't read at all. They
"haven't time." Lately I have taken to going off to Scarborough on
Saturday evenings, treating myself to a good dinner at the Regent (we
are allowed no drinks in Common Room except water: Hallows alone drinks
seltzer), and then going on to a show at the theatre or promenading the
Winter Gardens and watching the shop-girls and men dance. These people
have an irresistible fascination for me. It is a wonderful relaxation
to chatter amiably to these girls and men, and hear their point of view
of life, so many poles apart from that of the Radchester Common Room.
From one of these in particular, a very pretty girl of about eighteen,
with masses of corn-coloured hair and violet eyes, a complexion like
a Devon dairymaid and a figure light as a fairy, I have learnt a good
deal of another side of life. Her name is Vera Buckley: she works in a
large milliner's shop. We meet and dance together now every Saturday
night. At first when she learnt that I was a schoolmaster at Radchester
she was suspicious and cold, but now we are firm friends and she talks
unflaggingly about her hopes and fears, her likes and dislikes. She is
a welcome change from the Tapers and Tadpoles of Common Room, who argue
interminably upon the day's play and the moral defalcations of boys in
their respective houses and forms.
I dined with the Head Master last night and found myself quoting from a
new book on education. Just before I left, he took me aside and said,
"The less you read about education the better. All this new-fangled
talk about new ideas cuts at the very roots of the great tradition on
which the Public Schools were built up. I never engage a man who has
taken a diploma in the theory of education: he can never keep order,
he can't teach, he makes the boys rebel against their lot and is
altogether very dangerous. I like your keenness and I think you have
made a good beginning, but I warn you now against thinking that there
is any reform needed, and suggest that you read no more upon a subject
which you are called upon to practise, not to theorise about."
I attempted a defence but he refused to listen. Patting me gently on
the back he said, quite kindly, "When you are my age you'll see the
truth of what I've been telling you: youth is always in a great hurry
to bring about the millennium. It never realizes that no millennium
can be brought about by merely destructive criticism. Remember that
all these writers are outside the profession and are writing in total
ignorance of the conditions under which we labour."
He succeeded in making me feel very arrogant, very youthful, and very
much of a fool.
After all he has some right on his side. Boys do understand the system
of marks and of punishment and I suppose the way of least resistance is
the best. Anyway it is far easier to make a boy work through fear than
it is through love of the work: to rouse enthusiasm in the work itself
is an exceedingly arduous business. The difficulty is that I hate the
idea of caning a boy almost as much as some of the staff relish it.
They satisfy a sort of bestial lust by lashing a small boy and hearing
him yell. They would be horrified at the suggestion, but I am certain
that this is true. One has only to watch a man's eyes when he gives an
account of some of his more successful efforts in this direction. On
the other hand, I firmly believe that there is a type of boy who can
understand no other form of treatment. I only wish such types would not
come under my jurisdiction.
I find that I am becoming unpopular with Hallows. One very wet
afternoon I organized a paper-chase which was an overwhelming success:
about two hundred boys turned out and we caught the hares about four
o'clock, after a very tricky run over a well-laid course. Unfortunately
every one was late for "roll." By getting up this entertainment on a
"half" when there was nothing else to do I found myself launched into
about six rows.
Apparently every boy has to pass the doctor before he is allowed to
run on a paper-chase; whips had not been arranged for to see that the
"laggers" did not drop out _en route_ and find solace in a cottage
or public-house; I had no list of starters to compare with those who
finished to see whether any runners had died by the wayside, and, most
flagrant of all, I had upset "roll." I am afraid I shall never hear
the last of this. Hallows refuses to speak to me, but most loudly and
pointedly speaks of me in no uncertain tone of voice whenever I enter
Common Room: the direct upshot is that paper-chases are to be made
compulsory on days when there are no games, and a printed list of rules
to this end has been put up on the school board.
I suspect that Hallows framed them, for they are calculated to
remove any innocent pleasure that any boy might have derived from
cross-country running and implant in his heart an undying detestation
of this particular branch of exercise. I am afraid the truth is that
Hallows is jealous: I had overstepped my province in getting up this
run. He is the manager of all the school athletics and I had committed
an unforgivable offence in not asking his leave.
I am beginning to see signs of mutual jealousy everywhere. Each tutor
criticizes every other master's method of teaching, comparing it
(adversely, of course) with his own.
House-masters resent any humane intercourse between members of their
houses and junior assistant masters, though by the laws of common
sense it would seem obvious that the senior boys would prefer the
society of men only a little older than themselves as likely to be
more in sympathy with their ideas, more helpful in their troubles than
the elder members of the staff whom they, quite rightly, place on an
unapproachable pedestal.
_December 1909_
Now that examinations are upon us I have been attempting to revise my
mathematical and English work, with appalling results. My math. sets
appear to have learnt nothing: just a glimpse here and there of an
idea, all mixed up with the most amazing nonsense. I must have gone too
fast. Some of them have certainly tried to work. Perhaps it is that
mathematics is not the Queen of Sciences, after all, at any rate for
the unformed mind. I know that in my own school days I was successful
at it owing to a natural aptitude without understanding in the least
its practical usefulness.
There are boys who go again and again over the same ground, term
after term, working out quadratic equations, formidable and unwieldy
algebraic fractions, solving problems about triangles, parallelograms
and circles quite mechanically and perfectly without the ghost
of an idea as to what they all mean or what bearing they have on
practical life. They are, if questioned, content to talk about "mental
discipline" and "the more odious a task is the better it is for one's
education" in a manner unbearably priggish and foolish.
If a boy can work out a hundred examples correct to type, most of us
seem to think that we are teaching him something. On the contrary, I
believe that the only point in mathematical teaching is the training of
the mind to think logically and exactly, and to detect all vague and
shallow fallacies in argument or writing.
According to this theory the better a boy was at mathematics the
better he would be at English, whereas the truth is that the able
mathematician is rarely able to express himself in writing at all, and
certainly is not remarkable for simplicity or direct reasoning power in
his essays. It never strikes us that if a boy is capable of working out
an intricate equation he ought to be able to build up a paragraph of
carefully connected sentences, all sequent and working to some definite
solution or proof.
I am coming to the conclusion that all true education is a striving
after Beauty, and what does not actively pursue this end is a waste of
effort.
No sooner do I reach this idea than I begin to wonder what can
have induced our forefathers to erect such a hideous structure as
Radchester, in the middle of so barren, ugly, and terrifying a country.
Surely there can be no more depressing district in England than the
country round the school. On Sundays I occasionally go for walks, but
I never return without being obsessed by the gloom and drabness of it
all. If I walk down the seashore I see nothing but a bare waste of
grey waters, relieved by an interminable stretch of sand. There are
no gorgeous colourings on sea or land, such as we expect from the sea
and get in Devon and Cornwall. If I go inland I have no alternative
but to tramp over muddy fields the grass of which is as colourless as
the sea, and the only variety to the monotony of the level stretch is
a wind-swept naked tree, wan and haggard as an old tramp who has been
buffeted by Nature too long to care about his personal appearance:
if I take to the roads I am immediately led to contrast the solitary
deadness of these straight lanes, where you know for miles exactly what
is coming, with the rich lanes of the south, with their high hedges, a
riot of colour and song, deviating romantically every few yards, up and
down, round and round, ever calling you on to explore some gem which an
all-provident Nature has built for you just round the corner. There are
no mysteries to be explored in the vicinity of Radchester unless you
dive down a drain.
It is not strange that the cult of Beauty is neglected in such a place,
for where is Beauty to be found? The answer I find within my rooms:
only in my books and my few chosen friends among the boys can I rid
myself of the discontent which is so persistently seething within me.
Perhaps I should make an exception in the matter of games; I love
strenuous exercise but I object to making football my God, as so many
of my friends do. The boys, at any rate in the presence of masters,
talk of little else. Their only other topic of conversation is the
characters of their other masters, which is insidious and delightful,
but savouring too much of disloyalty and scandal-mongering.
One of the things I have enjoyed most this term has been the O.T.C.
All members of Common Room, by an excellent rule here, have first
to serve in the ranks. I have got to know the boys in this House
infinitely better by mixing with them on parades and field days as a
private than I ever should have by any other means: they seem to forget
all sense of difference and talk glibly and unconsciously about all
sorts of topics that normally would not crop up between master and
pupil. They no longer restrain their language quite in the same way
they do before a master. I imagine that pretty vigorous swearing is
prevalent in all schools: it seems to add a picturesqueness to their
vocabulary which would be entirely lacking otherwise, for a boy's
paucity of orthodox adjectives is astonishing. He is exactly on a par
with the farm labourer in this respect. He swears simply because he has
no other language to fall back upon. It is not his fault so much as
the master's. So far as I can gather no subject seems to be so badly
mishandled as the mother tongue. The average boy is expected to write
Latin prose and is caned for a false quantity in verses. He tries his
hand at original verse composition in both Latin and Greek: no one
thinks of asking him to write poetry in English, and when he does he is
looked upon as a freak. It seems a most topsy-turvy system: he spends
at least one hour every day at Latin: to English (of which he knows
nothing) he devotes two hours a week and during those two hours his
masters don't know what to teach him.
Some spend the time in parsing and analysing, though what utilitarian
benefits are to accrue hereafter from these it would be hard to
see. Others "read a play of Shakespeare," which is a euphemism for
note-taking and note-learning, a philological discourse or an exercise
in repetition; others again read out notes on the Mendelian theory,
which they call a skeleton, and require the form to clothe this
skeleton and reproduce it in the form of an essay.
I find that all my English lessons this term have been of the nature
of tentative experiments. First I read a play of Shakespeare very
rapidly, allotting parts to every member of the form. My first shock
was to discover that not one of them could read aloud. They were
afraid of their own voices: they gabbled through their parts at top
speed without paying any attention to the punctuation or attempting
to express emotion. Then I decided to make them come out and try to
act the play with the books in their hands. This was looked upon as a
grave departure from precedent and an opportunity for "ragging." When I
pointed out that there was plenty of chance for a display of horse-play
in the crowd scenes in _Julius Cæsar_ and _Coriolanus_, they possessed
themselves in patience until the time to read these plays. Heavens! How
they loved the mob scenes. Here was something after their own hearts.
At last I had roused their interests. Most of the comic scenes fell
very flat and so did all the more long-winded speeches, but once there
was a call for an uproar or a pageant they were as pleased as Punch.
I have now discovered that the only way to read plays is to go
straight ahead and disregard all difficult passages and notes and
get them amused and keen to perform. Incidentally, it makes them far
keener if they are permitted to "dress" the part. In _She Stoops to
Conquer_ and _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_ I had them all in
shrieks of laughter. But now, as I said, examinations are at hand and
woe is me. I'm afraid they won't be able to answer anything. Perhaps
their ideas of the characters may be more sound than if they learnt
them second-hand from Mr. Verity, but they'll get badly "pipped" on
historical inaccuracies and difficult contexts.
Then again, how am I to expect them suddenly to produce an essay on
"Town and Country," or "Conscription," or "Capital Punishment" when
I've always given them _carte blanche_ to write short stories, or
imaginary dialogues, or one-act plays or original verses on any subject
under heaven?
I think I'm going to hate examinations. I wish we could dispense with
them altogether. Most of the staff appear to revise all the work of the
first two months in the third month, and so get their pupils thoroughly
tired and stale of the tiny scrap of ground they have covered and
re-covered until they have worn it threadbare.
_December 31, 1909_
When it came to the end of term I was amazingly loath to leave
Radchester. In spite of the ghastly ugliness of the country, the bitter
winds from which there is no refuge, unsympathetic colleagues (somehow
I seem to have alienated most of the elder members of Common Room)
and the shattering of several of my ideals, I cannot deny that I have
enjoyed my first term as a Public School master immensely. I have not
rid myself of my nervous fear lest my forms should rise against me and
"rag" me as they "rag" poor old Pennyfeather and Dearden; I certainly
did not gain much kudos from the results of the examinations, either
in mathematics or in English; many of the boys dislike my methods and
do the minimum of work necessary to evade punishment, yet I have made
a few firm friends; I have led a healthy life, I have read a good many
books, and I am as keen as mustard to prove my ability to teach.
Benbow and Illingworth have each written to me and I find that I
treasure letters from boys above all others. Where other men of my age
fall in love with girls I suppose I give my affections to those boys
who show promise in English and take advantage of the seclusion of my
rooms to come and pour out their petty worries and ask for advice.
I have been reading somewhere of late that it is a dreadful thing for
a man with any brains to live always in the society of others less
mature than himself: he becomes didactic and in every way obnoxious:
I know that Charles Lamb was not alone in flying from the presence of
all schoolmasters: there is a distinctly noticeable trait in us, as a
profession, which makes us want to teach and advise, to lay down the
law: it is a habit against which I must most carefully guard.
On the other hand, always being with crowds of healthy youngsters
certainly tends to keep a man young: there are very few
responsibilities, I am catered for, I pay no rates or taxes, I
have £150 a year to spend on books, clothes, travel, and any other
incidental expenses I like: I have longer holidays than any other
professional man: for four months in the year I am free to do whatever
I like.
Of course I shall never be able to marry, never have sons and
daughters of my own. But then, as I never see a girl of my own class
at Radchester, I am never likely to want to settle down to domestic
life. After all, instead of one wife and a few children, I have three
or four hundred children of the most fascinating ages: I stand _in loco
parentis_ to countless numbers.
I don't feel that I want to become rich: I am willing to forgo all the
ordinary ambitions if I may have a more or less free hand in education,
and at last realize my many ideals about the training of youth.
It seemed unduly lonely at home during Christmas week compared with
the noisy cheeriness of school. For the first time in my life I am
beginning to feel quite bored with life at Darley. I long for the
games, the chatter, my form, my books, yes, even for Common Room, with
an aching heart. I hope the rest of the holidays will pass more quickly
than these last ten days. I take no pleasure in bridge-parties or
tea-fights: my only solace is to write reams of nonsense to Illingworth
and Benbow, and to read all that I can lay my hands on which bears on
the million or so theories of education.
II
_January 20, 1910_
I suppose it is an ineradicable trait in human nature to want to be
where one is not: when I was at home I longed for Radchester: now that
I am safely back in my own rooms I miss the civilization of home, the
constant presence of the other sex, the beauties of our moors and
combes. This is really a very savage, uncouth sort of place: at present
we are snow-bound, which seems to cut us off more than ever from the
outside world. I should hate to be ill here: the school doctor is, I
imagine, capable within limits, but there is no chance of securing
any kind of adequate nursing or home comforts. We are in very truth a
colony of Spartans. I find that I am hankering after the flesh-pots. I
want to see Vera Buckley again. I must write and fix up a dinner and a
theatre with her. I suppose if the Head Master found out I should be
ignominiously "sacked." Yet I can't see that such conduct can really
affect my status here. I don't propose to have her to tea in my rooms.
She amuses me and I amuse her. She lives in a world poles apart from
the one in which I live: she is a wonderful tonic after Common Room;
her talk is all of gaiety and the different sorts of men she meets,
pretty frocks and romance. By her side I feel amazingly old and dull
and careworn: she is really my sole link with the workaday world
outside. There is no chance of our friendship ripening into anything
else: I fail to see where the harm or the danger lies; we like one
another: we do each other good. As she so frequently tells me, I am
different from all the other "boys." I don't make love to her or any
nonsense of that sort; she acts as a refining influence on me. After
parting from her I feel less of a boor, more of a man of the world.
I suppose in every profession there are points of routine and minute
details that have to be observed that yet offend the new-comer's
sensibilities, but I doubt whether anything so utterly devoid of
purpose or so calculated to rub a man up the wrong way could ever have
been devised to compare with a masters' meeting.
At the beginning of term we all assemble in Common Room and the Head
Master reads out a list of proposed changes in the curriculum, which
as a rule affect but two men out of the thirty or forty gathered round
the table: the pros and cons of the changes are, however, heatedly
discussed by the parties concerned, while the rest of us yawn and eat
our heads off with boredom.
If, however, I or any junior member of the staff should have the
effrontery to propose any alteration or reform, a storm of abuse
immediately bursts on our heads and we are met with a final retort
which is meant to quash us for all time: "The existing system has been
in vogue for twenty-five years and no one has seen fit to question it
before: it has become hallowed with the passing of time and it would be
a sacrilege to tamper with it now."
Another feature of these meetings is the way in which each head of a
department fights for his own hand. The choirmaster thinks of nothing
but getting more time for choir practice, the officer commanding
the corps strenuously tries to procure an extra five minutes at each
end for his parades, the gymnasium expert urges the necessity of
physical training in school hours, the modern language master vainly
begs for less classics, the mathematicians for more hours devoted to
preparation, the games manager for less school work for the teams, and
so on.
A stranger would guess (and he would not be far wrong) at the end of
one of these meetings that we were all deadly enemies, each suspicious
of the other and certain in his own mind that he alone among the many
suppliants has been treated with great unfairness and that the school
is rapidly going to the dogs because he has not obtained his request.
The irony of the situation is heightened by the fact that we pray both
before and after the meeting that we may all work in complete harmony
for the common good of the boys, whereas in reality we are all as
disunited as any body of men could possibly be.