when we felt hungry, regardless of the time, we would just go in to
the nearest cottage and fill ourselves up with junkets and fruits and
cream and then lazily stroll on, regardless of rights of way, over
fields, through dense woods, by rabbit-warrens and carefully guarded
preserves. Often we had to run from farmers, gamekeepers and their
dogs, which added a good deal to the enjoyment: it just gave the extra
spice of danger which we wanted. Once we got cut off by the tide
and had to row over to Clovelly, where we put up for the night in a
white-washed cottage, which smelt so sweetly of lavender and thyme,
and was altogether so delectable with its spotlessly clean "flags"
and old oak panelling, that we swore that if we ever got rich we
would retire there and live as hermits, with a vast library to console
us for the loss of the outside world. One day we bought a couple of
rucksacks and set our faces towards Hartland Point and tramped all
round the coast until we got to Bude. We took several days over this,
because neither Illingworth nor I could ever help turning aside to
explore any lane which looked promising. We found so many wonderful
old Tudor manor-houses and cheery farm-houses that we could never tear
ourselves away before we had called and been given leave to explore
to our heart's content. Alone, I should never have dared to ask for
so strange a courtesy, but Illingworth is one of those boys who no
sooner sees than he must possess, a trait that he must have inherited,
for his father is one of the most famous and successful cotton men in
Manchester. In the end we arrived at Chagford. I don't quite know why,
except that Illingworth liked the sound of the name. We got there by
way of Okehampton and Sticklepath.
He had become very interested in John Trevena's novels, "A Pixy in
Petticoats," and "Arminel of the West," which he unearthed from my
shelves at school, and when he heard that we were in the neighbourhood
of the scenes therein depicted, nothing would content him but that we
should see for ourselves whether the people were as delightful or the
scenery so wonderful as Trevena had made them out to be; so we tramped
round the fringe of Dartmoor and put up at the first house we saw that
appealed to us on the outskirts of Chagford.
Looking back on it now I can honestly say that in this sweet village,
nestling under the shadow of the great moor, I found my ideal home: no
other place has ever given me, from the first moment I saw it in the
distance, quite the same sense of security and home. We were welcomed
at Fernworthy View as if we were prodigal sons returned home at last.
We had a wonderfully capacious sitting-room with a piano, which we
thumped on every night, singing ribald songs, "Buffalo Gals," "The
Mulligan Guards," and the latest musical comedy bits with Betty and
Thomasin, the two daughters of the house who waited on us. Before we
had been there three days we had made friends with the parson, the
doctor, one or two hunting men and all the villagers. We used to go
and gossip in the pubs, over the counter at the shops, and up by the
village pump opposite the church, where the majority of the yokels
used to collect in the evening to discuss the doings of the day: we
learnt a good deal of local scandal, accounts of the day's sport with
the hounds, or fishing or shooting. Wherever we went we seemed to make
friends.
And then by day, when the villagers were at work, we used to go out on
to the moor and follow the Wallabrook, trying to trace each part of the
stream to its source.
The moor always has an amazing effect upon me. I know that Eden
Phillpotts and John Trevena talk a good deal about the malicious spirit
of the great monoliths and the permanence of the stone, making even
more futile by contrast the efforts of puny and transient man, but I
find Dartmoor infinitely consoling. Here at Radchester I certainly
do feel a malign influence in the ugliness of the flat lands and the
hideous waste of sand and grey water, but there is a richness about the
moor that makes Nature there seem much more the Eternal Mother and
Generous Giver, sympathizer at any rate with strong and lusty youth.
Grandeur and beauty in scenery surely can never do anything but elevate
and purify the spirit of man. I am never happier than when I have
scaled the top of one of these Tors and can turn north, south, east,
and west and see no living soul. The wind sweeps through me, the sun
shines for me alone, all the blue of the heavens is mine. I am nearer
to the elemental things than at any other time in my life. I am no
longer introspective, dwelling on human imperfections; I am just filled
to the brim with thankfulness, and opening my arms wide I feel that I
am about to be taken into the embraces of my Lord Himself: He is never
so near as He is on these Mounts of Transfiguration: for all hills
tend to transfigure not only God but man. As he rises farther from the
valley in body, so does his soul expand. Young Illingworth and I found
that we could talk of things on the moor that we should never have
dreamt of discussing elsewhere. After a long and arduous climb, just
to throw oneself down on the heather and gaze languidly, in sweet and
utter content, up into the sky! How remote and unreal Radchester and
all it stands for seemed at such moments, how small and ridiculously
inept the quarrels and troubles that loom so large in Common Room;
these hills certainly sweep away any malice that one may feel, or
grudge that one may bear against one's fellow-men. Like St. Peter I
never want to come down from these heights: I want to live in that
rarefied atmosphere always, but the workaday world calls and we have to
descend again into the fray.
Betty and Thomasin, as an alternative to the noises on the piano, used
to get us to go into the kitchen and read aloud to them till bedtime
stories out of "The Arabian Nights."
As an alternative to the moor there was always the Teign, in which
river we used to paddle and bathe and shoot at fish with a horrible
old revolver which Illingworth had been prevailed upon to buy from a
poacher. Another of our sources of pleasure was an old disused mill, a
survival of the eighteenth century. Illingworth found a chain by which
we could be hauled up from floor to floor by a system of pulleys on the
fifth floor: he never tired of this particular form of amusement, and
on really wet days we used to spend hours pulling one another up and
down like sacks of wheat.
Alas, it was all too soon over: the weeks sped by like wildfire and
yesterday was a day of sad partings from many firm and fast friends
among the moor-folk. At any rate we have promised to go back. It seems
incredible to think that it was only yesterday ... and here I am making
out my scheme of work for the term, paying last term's accounts,
getting ready to renew my feud with Hallows, full of determination like
poor old Perrin in that school-story of Hugh Walpole's that this term
shall be better. I really will not go so fast in mathematics, I will
instil my own sense of morality in my boys, I will do something to
alter the ridiculous codes which govern their mode of conduct. At any
rate to-night I feel amazingly strong and healthy, and I am as fit for
the fray physically as a man can be.
_June 10, 1910_
I suppose each individual master unconsciously draws to him a peculiar
type of boy. I begin to think that the pariah finds himself especially
attracted to me.
There have been two horrible rows this term, one during the first week
when I was fresh from the healthy wilds of Dartmoor, full of vigour to
instil my high ideals into the minds of all who came into contact with
me.
Immorality appears to be all-prevalent; some of the finest boys in
the school had to leave at a moment's notice, among them Illingworth.
Even now, a month after the event, I can scarcely credit it. I cannot
believe that it is the small boys' fault. Jefferies came up to say
good-bye and appeared to be heart-broken: yet he was the most flagrant
offender of them all. I felt quite unable to cope with the disaster at
all. I didn't know what to say to him. I tried to elicit from him what
it was that first of all started boys off in this hideous vice, and I
think he tried his best to give me a rational answer.
"I suppose with me, sir," he began, "it was pure boredom. Life here
seemed so narrow; there was no possibility of an outlet for the
emotions. We are so narrowly confined, so closely watched, so driven
and looked after every hour of every day: the routine is killing to the
imagination. Then comes along a good-looking small boy; a longing comes
over one to make a friend of him, but the school rules most stringently
forbid that, so we are driven to secrecy and secrecy breeds vicious
ideas. We can't meet openly: we have to think out lonely and unlikely
places: then human nature asserts itself and the rest follows only too
quickly."
"But surely," I interposed, "surely the thought of your own honour, if
not of the physical ills that are bound to follow, act as a deterrent?
Sermons and house-master's warnings and so on must have some effect."
"None, I'm afraid, sir, when it comes to the point; the attraction
proves too strong and the added spice of danger, as in the case of
those Sundays in the public-houses, is a tremendous incentive. The sin
seems to lie, not in the action, but in being found out. There are
heaps and heaps of fellows who have left here loaded with honours,
thought by all of you to be paragons of virtue, veritable Sir Galahads,
who in reality are infinitely worse than any of us who are now being
sacked. You don't cleanse your Augean stable by firing out a score
or so of unfortunate wretches every year as a horrible warning to
the rest. Immorality is not like a fire which can be stamped out; if
there is any certain method it lies in gentle handling and weaning
us gradually from impure thoughts to higher things. I know that you
are awfully sick with me and I feel a rotten swine to you, as if I
had betrayed a trust, but you came too late for us; probably you'll
do more for the new kids. It can only be done by catching us before
we are bored and making us really interested in literature, music,
art--something with Beauty in it which is not compulsory. I know the
prevalent opinion is that those who are interested in art are the
worst of all: the truth is quite the reverse, the worst offenders are
the unimaginative beefy bloods. There seems to be a lurking suspicion
in the average schoolmaster's mind that all beauty is effeminate, if
not actively immoral. I believe in reality that immorality is as much
due to the suspicious and not too clean minds of our masters as to any
other agency.
"We are never directly spoken to on the matter. If a house-master does
talk about it he blushes and stammers and talks about sex as if it
were in itself foul. He makes a quite innocent youngster begin to take
a delight in these hidden things. The truth is that they ought not to
be hidden at all. Once people begin to talk openly and discuss without
false shame all these matters, this vice will disappear, not before.
I've got to suffer, so there's no point in my making excuses, but you,
sir, if you are really keen on getting rid of this evil, remember that
the only way to do it is to get hold of boys and interest them in life.
Give them something to occupy their minds, so that there is no empty
corner of their souls swept and garnished ready for the occupation of
the spirit of evil."
It is altogether horrible; all my best friends have gone, the very boys
that I had trusted most and loved most. I cannot imagine evil of young
Illingworth after our month together on Dartmoor. I dare swear no evil
thought once crossed his mind the whole time we were together. I am
certain in my inmost mind that this vice is not an essential part of
life as some writers try to make out; I do not believe that youth must
pass through this stage of adolescence and that it would be uncanny if
he did not give way to his natural feelings.
I believe one reason for our failure here to cope with this dire
disease is the lack of feminine society. I wonder how co-education
schools stand in this matter. I believe the natural throwing of boys
into the constant society of girls would result in a total elimination
of all foulness, whether of thought or deed.
One of the most disgusting things in all my life here is the
uncleanness of so many boys' minds. I hate the idea of a Bowdlerized
Shakespeare, for instance, and yet when I come across a passage that
could possibly be construed in a dirty way, I find my boys sniggering,
loving the innuendo: it is then that I want to make the reading
of Rabelais compulsory: that would cure them. I have never passed
occasions like this without bursting forth into a vehement tirade
against the clod-like state of a mind that can find matter for jesting
in such things.
It is the secrecy that ruins everything. If, for instance, I were
openly to proclaim my friendship for Vera Buckley, whom I still see
weekly, I should be suspected at once of having seduced her. Just as
it is imagined that no older boy can make a friend of a younger boy
without having some ulterior, filthy motive, so no man can be seen with
a shop-girl (or any girl for the matter of that) without giving rise to
scandalous suggestions as to his attitude towards her.
I wish some members of Common Room could be privileged to hear the sort
of conversation that passes between Vera and myself. She is something
of a philosopher, and her outlook on life, which is eminently cheery
and healthy, does me a world of good when I am depressed. I talk over
with her all my schemes for educational reform and she is intensely
sympathetic and alive. She offers a vast number of amazingly good
suggestions: one of her most frequent points is that I should try
to teach my boys not to divide all her sex into two quite separate
divisions, (1) their mothers, sisters, and girls whom they meet at
dances, parties and games, to whom they are studiously courteous and
chivalrous, and (2) the rest, shop-girls and others, whom they ogle
in the streets, take out for walks, kiss and fondle and treat as
instruments for their own pleasures, to be discarded at will as soon as
they tire of them.
_July 4, 1910_
The golden days of summer are fast slipping by and I do little else but
bathe, play cricket, and read in my spare time.
Most of the boys hate having to play cricket every afternoon of the
term and chafe exceedingly at the tediousness of "half-holidays," when
they are expected to stay out at their games for four and a half hours.
The more sensible take out rugs and books, and bask in the sun until
they are called upon to field, but the temptation to go off and bathe
must be pretty strong when you can hear the waves softly lapping on the
beach below, calling you to come and cool yourself in the water. There
is a most absurd rule here that only school prefects may bathe in the
sea: the rest of the school has to content itself with the covered-in
baths at stated and only too rare intervals.
These rules seem to me to be the ruin of the school: long summer
afternoons ought to be given up to freedom and jollity. Boys should be
encouraged to go as far away as possible for picnics, bicycle rides,
and walks, to keep themselves fresh, instead of which "roll-calls" are
held at ridiculously close intervals; not more than two hours are ever
allowed to pass without assembling the whole school to answer their
names. The place seems to be run on the basis of "Out of sight, up to
mischief." Every one suspects everybody else.
The Common Room garden, which is the only place in the whole
neighbourhood where one can see flowers growing, possesses one
tennis-court; the rivalry to secure it for a game among those who like
tennis is comic to watch. Intense hatred is bred if any one dares to
use it more frequently than any one else. If any of the junior members
of the staff try to get a game among themselves they are taunted with
a lack of loyalty and duty. It is the young man's privilege to keep
an eye on the games, to umpire at cricket and see that fellows don't
"slack."
Luckily for me, I much prefer the society of the boys, and I play or
umpire every day. Equally luckily I am tremendously keen on fielding
and I thoroughly enjoy every game I play, so long as I am not expected
to take it too seriously. But I certainly sympathize with those
unfortunates who hate the game and yet are compelled to waste all these
precious afternoons chasing after a ball, not caring in the least who
wins or loses or how badly or well they play.
Quite a number of boys have told me that they would infinitely prefer
that there were no "half-holidays." The hours in school pass so much
quicker. If only the surrounding country were passably interesting and
we could get up excursions to explore woods or churches, it would to
some extent solve the difficulty, but though it is less depressing here
in the summer than in the winter, there is no beauty anywhere, nothing
to call one away from the eternal round of cricket.
The only break is Speech Day, a most amazing ceremony which gives one
furiously to think. We had an Archbishop and several famous men of
the day to talk to us this year, but the sole business of the affair
seemed to be to feed the parents as lavishly as possible and to laud
ourselves up to the skies. The only criterion of success, to judge from
the Head Master's speech, was the number of Higher Certificates gained
in the annual examination. He obviously makes a fetish of this; he
publishes it in all the papers and recurs to it at constant intervals,
in sermons, at masters' meetings and at dinner-parties. Apparently we
stand or fall by this one qualification. Anything further from the true
end and aim of education it would be hard to imagine. For this one
day of speeches and lunch the whole place is transformed: it becomes
almost civilized, a part of the world that we know outside. There are
motor-cars, pretty, smartly dressed girls with their mothers, and proud
fathers full of malapropos comments, and--most important of all--no
compulsory cricket. For one whole day we get a chance to breathe, to
look round and talk, and at night if a boy is lucky he may even dine
with his people at their hotel in Scarborough.
It need scarcely be said how flat the rest of the term seems after this
great day, so eagerly looked forward to, so long in coming, so quickly
over when it does arrive.
I think I derived most of my joy from comparing the garb of my
colleagues on this day with their ordinary, every-day habiliments.
I suppose no class of men dresses more shabbily than the schoolmaster;
as he is so abominably underpaid that is not to be wondered at. What
is a matter for comment is the extraordinary costume he dons on gala
occasions.
Grey frock-coats with black trousers and a straw hat, dark morning coat
with brown boots and a bowler--there is no end to the grotesqueness of
the combination of ill-assorted garments. We look like a lot of master
grocers tricked out for an annual convention. After all, clothes are
not a very important part of life, but it does somehow emphasize our
aloofness from the workaday world to appear clad like Rip Van Winkles
once a year. Our gaucherie when we are called upon to talk to our
visitors would make even a shop-walker wince. We seem to have lost the
art of conversation: our tongues are rusty; we have no commonplaces, we
cannot even hand round tea or food without falling over one another. We
feel all the time that these parents are laughing at our awkwardness,
that the girls have labelled us all as old fossils, bloodless, not
unlike harmless lunatics: their brothers will certainly not tend to
remove that impression when asked.
Altogether I felt ashamed of my profession for the whole of that day. I
would willingly forget it.
I have been wondering lately whether I am not wasting such talents as I
have at Radchester. I certainly do not want to stay here for ever with
no prospect of ever earning more than £300 a year, and yet there is no
denying that on the whole I love the place and that I feel an insidious
temptation to take root here. Just by way of experiment I have
answered a few advertisements to see if I have any chance of getting
anything else.
One man wanted me to act as secretary to a firm of motor manufacturers,
but that seems to be tame and dull compared with this.
The Board of Education have offered me a post as Junior Inspector of
Board Schools in Essex, but I dislike the smell of board schools and
constant travelling up and down the county does not appeal to me at
all. The most tempting offer has come from India, to take over the job
of Professor of English at a native university. I dallied with that
idea for some time, but my people were against it, so I reluctantly
refused it. The pay was good and the life would certainly be
interesting, besides which I should then be able to gratify my desire
to travel. The East is always calling me, ever since I first began to
read Conrad. But should I find an Illingworth or a Benbow among the
natives? I imagine the contingency to be a remote one. On the other
hand, I should broaden my mind and come into contact with men and women
with ideas as different as possible from those current here.
One result of my tentative efforts to leave has been a sort of
restlessness which has made me buy guidebooks to all sorts of places.
Illingworth and I had arranged to spend the summer holidays at
Chagford, but now that he is gone I am likely to be at a loose end and
I don't know where to go. I've thought of the Highlands, the Lakes,
Ireland, Cornwall and Wales: I cannot make up my mind. I find that I
want a companion and there is no one in Common Room with whom I should
care to go.
_July 31, 1910_
Now that I have come to the end of my first year as a Public School
master, I am trying to take stock of the situation. I have learnt a
good deal since last September and I certainly am devoted to my job. I
have not yet got over my initial nervousness. I still have nightmares
of my boys getting out of hand and yet I have had no great difficulty
in keeping order. I certainly don't like taking prep. or looking after
"Hall" while three hundred and fifty boys eat, but I can cope with
any number of boys up to forty and keep them at work. During the last
week I have been invigilating and correcting examination work: my boys
have not done particularly well in mathematics. Apparently I still go
too fast or else I am unable to explain adequately. Compared with my
English work I find mathematics uncommonly dull. In English I have got
some really good results. Some boys have written short stories, others
plays, others verses, many of which show originality, good sense, and
a capacity for expression which I certainly did not get last year. I
have interested them, too, in reading: they borrow all my books, new
and old. I read extracts from all sorts of authors in form and try to
whet their appetites for more. I only wish that instead of a paltry
two hours a week I could inveigle the Head to give me an hour a day.
All the other English masters here confine themselves to analysis,
parsing, précis, and one play of Shakespeare per year. I have run
through (lightly) the whole course of English Literature in the last
three terms and some boys have specialized on drama, others on ballads,
others on fiction and a few on poetry, each following his own bent.
I wonder why this all-important subject has been so neglected. That it
has is evident from the silly letters most boys write and the twaddle
that gets into the school magazine. Why any one pays sixpence for
the monthly _Radcastrian_ passes my comprehension. It consists of a
facetious all too brief Editorial, badly strung together, followed by
pages of description of games which interest no one except the players,
and them only if they receive honourable mention, a sentimental piece
of artificial versifying, a list of elevens and fifteens, promotions,
colourless reports of debates and lectures, and a few letters of abuse.
I'd guarantee to turn out a better journal from the weekly output of my
form. The worst of it is that the average boy is interested in nothing
at all, there is nothing that he wants to read about. So a tradition
springs up that a school magazine shall be solely a chronicle of games.
I am now in the middle of writing reports. I wonder why it is that
as soon as we are confronted by one of these queer documents all
powers of criticism and expression desert us, and we, one and all,
descend to a jargon which is quite meaningless. I find myself filling
about a hundred of these slips with such idiotic remarks as "Industry
adequate," "Painstaking," "Very fair but could work harder," "Lacks
concentration," "Very weak but tries," "Neat and hard-working," and so
on. When they are filled up they are about as much good as a guide to
parents as when they are untouched. No one could possibly gauge a boy's
merit or progress from these things. They remind me of marks, which as
a criterion of a boy's terminal success are as bad a test as could be
devised. I always feel that I am being paid £150 a year simply to do
this sort of hack work, to fill up reports and to make out a weekly
order for my form. All the rest of my work I give willingly without
payment.