himself off from the beauties of the south, from all decent society,
and all chance of meeting a girl of his own status: it must be a
terrible life for him, for his senses are not blunted. He sits and
mopes, thinking over old days when he too lived in Arcadia.
I don't think that I could ever settle down in the north. I like the
bustle and the sense of importance that possesses the money-makers in
Leeds, but I object to the absence of sun, of the sleepy happiness of
the south; the crude dialect, rasping and hard, seems typical of the
people here. They seem to have no time to devote to anything which does
not actually increase their income, they pride themselves on their
parsimony and yet they are strangely inconsistent.
I have just got back from a House supper, a quaint terminal affair
held by the House which wins the Senior Athletic Cup for the term:
how different these tame, nervous affairs are from the full-blooded,
riotous orgies of Oxford days. It appears that it is necessary to get a
man drunk before you can really put him at his ease at a big gathering.
The much-watered claret-cup which passes for strong drink at these
school-shows is pitiable enough, but it is typical of the spirit of
the whole thing. Most of the principals concerned are in a state of
pitiable terror because of the speeches which they are expected to make
at the conclusion of the feast. Conversation is tedious and conducted
in undertones; there are frequent dead silences; House-masters work
unflaggingly to put people at their ease, but every one feels conscious
of his clothes and his neighbour's criticisms. We are all afraid of
saying the wrong thing or of omitting to praise some one who coached
the team or played well: every time some name is left out which ought
to have been included, some one asked to sing who breaks down, some one
to speak who only succeeds in stammering out platitudes.
And yet if there ever was a man calculated to put people at their ease,
it is the House-master in whose house I live. Heatherington is one of
the finest men I have ever met: he represents the high-water mark in
schoolmasters.
He is an excellent scholar, bred in the best traditions of Eton and
Christ Church, of good family, hard as nails physically, a double
Blue, a prominent mountaineer, a born humorist, well-to-do, whose one
great aim in life is to make and keep his House famous for sportsmen,
scholars and gentlemen. He knows his boys through and through and
makes friends with all of them: every one in the place is devoted to
him. He belongs to no clique in the Common Room, but preserves the
best traditions of the Englishman in his own life and in that of his
boys. Yet even he cannot attain the unattainable: he cannot make a
House supper "go." The only people who enjoy themselves to the full are
the fags: they have no responsibility, they simply eat and drink and
applaud. For the rest of us it is one long agony.
_Christmas, 1910_
As usual I have come home for Christmas: as usual I miss Radchester and
my boys more than I can say. There is nothing to do here except visit
the villagers, go for walks with my mother, and write letters.
I like the villagers best at our Christmas dances. They are more
natural then, and sing and talk and play games and dance with utter
abandon: they no longer suspect one of ulterior, hidden motives. They
extend the right hand of fellowship and we all give ourselves up to
whole-hearted enjoyment. They are all, young and old, content to be as
children, innocent and friendly, actuated by no other motive than the
giving and taking of pleasure. Would that they were always like this.
I have been getting up debates in the village institute this Christmas,
and I have been surprised at the high level of intelligence displayed
and the sincerity of the oratory of the few who speak. They were
diffident at first, but soon warmed up as they got interested and
we have always roused considerable warmth of feeling before we have
finished the evening's entertainment.
What does distress me about village life is the education. I am almost
certain that no education at all would be better than the present
half-and-half system. To take away a boy or girl from school at
thirteen or fourteen is criminal: children at that age have just been
trained to want to know--and they are then taken away and the labour of
years all undone by being pushed into mills, on to farms, or behind
counters, where nothing but mechanical obedience and servility are
required. They forget to read, they forget how to write, they have no
interest in the things of the mind. It amazes me that they grow up
at all with anything but animal instincts. Education in England, so
far as the majority of the children go, is useless and will continue
to be so until it is made compulsory that no boy or girl shall leave
school before the age of sixteen or seventeen. You can't do much with
mindless louts of eighteen with one hour's Bible lesson a week. If any
one disbelieves this, let him try to coach a dozen villagers in amateur
theatricals: I've tried it and I know. They are simply blocks of wood
once you put them on a platform. The average Public School boy of
fifteen is quite at home on the stage: your yokel of any age is simply
stiff and lifeless, unable to be anybody but himself, charcoal his face
never so deeply.
_January 15, 1911_
I have had a gay fortnight in the Potteries, staying with the Pasleys.
Young Pasley is in Heatherington's house and in my form; his father is
a tile manufacturer and fabulously wealthy. I found the whole family
lovable. They live in a large house in the middle of grimy Hanley. They
are real sons of the soil and proud of it. The father and mother speak
broad Staffordshire, the three girls and the two boys as the result of
Public School education are ultra-refined and are inclined to bully
their parents, who, however, hold the whip-hand. They have high tea
instead of dinner; they sit down soberly in the evening to hear Adela
(who is fresh home from Dresden and is engaged to the local curate)
play the violin. At ten Mrs. Pasley rises with, "Well, lads, it's time
for bye-bye: I'll be sayin' good neet to you, Mester."
They delight in showing me over the warehouses. They love every inch
of their hideous streets and proudly point out the excellence of their
schools, their public baths, their shops and theatres; every one knows
every one else. They almost bow the knee at the name of Wedgwood, they
unaffectedly despise London. They know that the hub of the universe is
to be found in the Five Towns. The exact income of every visitor to the
house is known and talked about almost to the exclusion of every other
topic. They read nothing at all; they genially regard me as a fool for
wasting my brains at "school-teaching," as they call it, but they are
genial and hospitable. Looking back on it, my visit seems to have been
a long succession of feeding fowls, dancing, shopping, and looking at
priceless china in the making.
I had one or two long talks with father Pasley on the subject of Public
School education: he is not quite certain that he is getting his
money's worth at Radchester.
"That lad of mine is not squeezing all he might out of yon school: I
don't like throwing a hundred and twenty quid a year into the sea.
You've got antique methods of learning a lad mathematics at your place,
Mester, and I don't hold with ignorance; classics and such fal-lals is
all right for parsons and the likes of you, but my lad's not going to
be a parson nor a school-teacher neether: he's going into t' business
and he knows it: he's going to have to earn his brass, same as I did
mine. I don't believe in a lad being brought up soft with the notion as
'ow he's going to have a mint o' money at his fingers' ends to play the
fool with. Pasley and Son's a firm as wants men as 'ev got some grit to
'em: I sends my boy to school to get grit--learn 'im that, Mester, and
let the rest go."
VI
_March 3, 1911_
These Easter terms, short as they are, are a big strain on the nervous
system: no sooner do we get back to work than some luckless youth
spreads measles, chicken-pox, scarlet fever or some other malady
through the school, and we have to teach depleted forms, drill depleted
companies and play House games with half our side away. I find that
my favourite illness is influenza. I usually manage to keep a sort of
running cold all through the winter months, which develops periodically
into that vile sickness; it is then that I get pessimistic. I feel
intolerably lonely and uncomfortable, and sigh for the sunny south and
warmth and cosy fires and more humane companionship. The doctor here
is a dear, but rather rough and ready in his methods. He hasn't the
time to waste his hours on individual cases, neither is he exactly an
expert. It is dreadful to lie in bed and hear the tramp of feet down
the cloisters, the bells ringing for chapel, hall and school and not be
in it.
One is forgotten almost at once by every one. People simply haven't
the time to sit at a bedside even if they wanted to, and I long for
conversation and a cheery laugh on these occasions. School is all
right so long as one keeps fit, but once fall out of the race and it
is a veritable hell. My last bout of "flu" has left my nerves in a
thoroughly disordered condition: I feel almost suicidal at times. I
get very restless. I long to create in writing: of late I have been
trying, without any great success, in all sorts of directions, verse,
short stories, plays, articles--even a novel. Everything I submit to
publishers comes back after I have endured agonies of anticipation
in waiting. Something is wrong. Yet I feel convinced that I have it
in me to write. I can only let myself go in this diary: here I don't
have to think of publishers or editors. I write just to please myself.
That is what so delights me in reading Pepys. He just rattles on with
no thought of an audience, absolutely unselfconscious. I look on this
diary as a secret companion to whom I can confide all my troubles
and joys: my hatred of Hallows, my love for the boys, my theories on
education, the good days of the holidays, books I have read--anything
and everything that interests me.
I am quietly amassing a library. I only wish that I could rely on
borrowers to return the books I lend them. It is not the slightest
good my going into form and advising boys to read Lamb and Browning
and Dickens and Thackeray unless I can provide the books for them.
The House libraries are under-equipped, the school library is only
accessible to the Sixth Form. But boys have no consciences in the
matter of returning books: they prefer to cut the fly-leaf out and
substitute their own names in some cases! Still my job is to instil a
love for the old and new masters of literature by whatever means, and
to do this I suppose I must not grudge an impoverished library.
One thing that annoys me is the fact that I cannot share all my
treasures with the boys. Most modern writing is too strong wine for
adolescents. I wish Common Room did not also imagine that it is too
strong meat for their innocent minds. It seems to me that the man who
refuses to try to keep abreast of all the modern thought has no right
to be a schoolmaster at all. What in the world is the use of living
solely on a diet of the _Times_ and the _Spectator_? I advocated the
_New Statesman_ for the reading-room and was promptly howled down.
Apparently the idea that a man can look on both sides of a question is
looked on here as preposterous. What the _Spectator_ says is looked
upon as a final judgment in all things. The middle articles of that
quite estimable paper are read aloud as examples of perfect modern
English style to boys in the top forms, and they are incited to ape it
assiduously.
Occasionally, on Sunday mornings, a progressive young master will read
a little "In Memoriam" or "A Death in the Desert" to his form as a
variant to ordinary Divinity, but he does so tremblingly lest authority
should hear of it and rebuke him.
One of our men preaching last Sunday even ventured to read an extract
from "Romola," in the pulpit, but apologized profoundly for so doing
and damned poor George Eliot with faint praise by saying, "She was not
a bad woman."
There have been a number of feuds in Common Room lately which have
reminded me of the umbrella episode in "Mr. Perrin and Mr. Traill."
Young Rowntree who joined us this term has a brother in the army who
happens to be stationed close by: he had him over to dinner one night
last week and brought in some "fizz" to liven things up a bit. He
sits, of course, at the bottom of the junior table, not very far from
me. Not wishing to appear niggardly to the rest of us he brought in
three bottles in order to pass them round to those who sat near him. We
had a quite riotous orgie and for the first time since I have been at
Radchester the junior table quite drowned the senior both in laughter
and conversation.
It really was funny to watch the white drawn faces of the water
drinkers of the top table, with the one syphon of seltzer as relief,
while we, upstarts of a new age, were regaling ourselves with Pommery.
There was a fearful row about it afterwards. Rowntree was written to by
half the staff (who had not tasted the champagne) about the etiquette
with regard to visitors. It was only by courtesy of the senior members
that junior masters were allowed to invite visitors at all: it was
taken for granted that if such a privilege were extended juniors would
not abuse it by drinking anything but water. There was a battle royal.
Rowntree is young enough not to give in without a struggle: during the
last week he has taken in a bottle of some sort to dinner every night.
He is the kind of man who won't be kept longer than a term. He "rags"
his form and incites them to "rag" him and everybody else. He refuses
to take Radchester seriously: he walks across the prefect's lawn (an
unpardonable offence for a master), he walks about arm-in-arm with the
boys in his form if he likes them; he swears quite openly and fluently
in Common Room, he takes away the papers so that he can read them
comfortably in his own room and forgets to return them, he even smokes
cigars in the masters' reading-room. The old men can do nothing with
him: he is impervious to black looks and misunderstands rebukes. He
cuts every other chapel and usually forgets to take "prep." or "roll."
On "halves" he always goes away, sometimes as far afield as Leeds or
York on his motor-bicycle, and does not arrive home till two or three
the next morning. He wears bright ties, silk socks, soft collars, and
very well-fitting light clothes, totally regardless of the convention
which demands black from boy and master alike. He is a very disturbing
factor in Common Room and every one is moving Heaven and Earth to have
him "sacked." What worries me about him is his ability: he writes with
considerable success. He confessed to me one day that he only meant
to stay one term: "I want copy for a novel I have in my mind--these
old fossils with their moth-eaten, stereotyped conservatism give me
a grand field. I guess this is just the best Public School in the
country for my purpose, but my hat, I shouldn't care to have to stick
at it for a year. It's funny to think that you all were alive once as
undergraduates."
He read a chapter or two of his book to me the other day: he's got the
spirit of the place exactly. I wish I had his gift. He sees everything
and has the power of sifting his evidence with wonderful accuracy: he
misses nothing.
Since he came I have given up my Sunday walks with Renton, who talks
of nothing but dyspepsia and his own powers of teaching, and have
accompanied Rowntree on some of his excursions on his motor-bicycle.
We lunch in Scarborough and get into conversation with week-enders.
Rowntree looks on all humanity as "copy," and is without any sense of
modesty. He picks up loungers in hotel bars, girls behind counters,
girls on the pier, tramps, hotel porters, "nuts" in the hotel lounge
and all sorts of unexpected people. He always gets some fantastic story
out of them: he is as good a story-teller as George Borrow and just as
great a liar. His imagination combined with his experience make him a
rare raconteur. He doesn't buy many books, but he is not averse from
borrowing mine. I only regret that I can never get them back; he is
quite shameless in the matter of purloining literature: he takes books
out of the school library without "entering them" and soon begins to
think that they really belong to him. He reminds me a good deal of a
boy called Senhouse who is also unable to bow the knee in the house
of Rimmon; he conforms to none of the school regulations and how he
has escaped expulsion up to now beats me. At present he is raising
for himself untold trouble by making friends with a small boy called
Gillman in Hallows' house. He is desperately fond of this child, and
waxes quite sentimental over him to me. There is no harm in either
of them, and they are as open as the day in their relations with one
another: they wait for each other after chapel, hall, and school. They
go for long walks together, they contrive to sit together at school
lectures and in prep. Hallows and Heatherington have each lectured both
of them, and Hallows has caned Gillman frequently, but they refuse to
give up the friendship.... Common Room is as usual in a frenzy over it
and I have been reported to the Head Master for aiding and abetting
them in their scandalous defiance of rules by having them to tea
together in my rooms.
In my defence I mentioned that boys came and went just as they
pleased in my rooms and that I couldn't very well prohibit any one
of them at any special time. I also pointed out that I failed to see
where the harm lay in this particular case of Damon and Pythias,
that such a friendship might well be the saving of Senhouse, who
is naturally inclined to be wild and restless. Like Rowntree, he
has a habit of cutting chapel, prep., school, games, and everything
that is compulsory, whenever he feels like it. He always takes his
punishments without a murmur, but he likes to feel that he can escape
from the routine when it bears on him too harshly: there is no speck
of harm in his composition, any more than there is in Rowntree, but
no one here could ever understand the point of view of either of
them. Meanwhile the storm rages and Gillman and Senhouse continue to
meet, while Hallows grinds his teeth in impotent anger. All the same
the iron system will prevail in the end, routine always has the last
word: they will both be expelled for continued disobedience of school
rules, though nothing criminal can be proved against them. A boy's love
for another boy is a pretty strong thing: it can withstand ridicule,
punishment, and any weapon that authority can bring to bear against it
in the case of such a faithful pair as these two. I cannot see what
useful purpose can be served by these iron rules, which allow of no
exceptions; that, normally speaking, it is better for boys not to make
friends outside their own Houses, and not to encourage friendships in
which there is any disparity of age is perhaps open to question, but
at any rate strong arguments can be adduced in support of it--but when
it comes to a piece of wanton cruelty like this, the whole business
becomes silly. I have aired this opinion in Common Room to the no
little indignation of all the staff. It is a relief to get back to the
seclusion of my room and my books after all the riots, alarums and
excursions of these school rows. I wish we could learn to pull together
instead of squabbling like a pack of gutter children. I suppose I ought
to keep quiet myself if I wished this consummation so devoutly, but I
cannot stand by and see all my ideals smashed without remonstrating.
It is a mistake to herd thirty or forty men together for meals
and companionship for three months on end: we ought to have our
lives sweetened by marriage. Yet I suppose that married life would
take off the edge of our keenness for our work: we should have
domestic interests which would prevent us from devoting ourselves
whole-heartedly to our work. Sometimes I find myself dreaming and
pining for the life-companionship of some girl who would understand me
and soothe my ruffled senses after a Common Room fight. Yet I suppose
marriage fetters one: the married man is bound hand and foot, and can
no longer set out on great adventures. He has given hostages to fortune
and must be content to play for safety for the rest of his life. I
can't see myself doing that. I want to be free as the air, free to play
games, free to say what I like and risk being "sacked" if I offend.
Yet I wonder sometimes, like Charles Lamb, what my children would
be like. It would be splendid to perpetuate my name, to see another
generation carrying on the work I have begun. There are so many changes
to be wrought in education. We live in an age of pioneers: we are no
longer content merely to accept the traditions of our fathers. We
want to better their methods and results: we learn by the mistakes of
our forbears. The Head Master hates this view. His idea is that only
through experience can a man really teach, therefore we should accept
the tenets which our elders hold and abide faithfully by them.
_April 3, 1911_
I have been of late reading numbers of books on education. The days of
Thring and Arnold are over; instead of two textbooks on the theory,
there are now two hundred or two thousand. Every day sees some new
thesis appear hot from the press. People are beginning to take an
interest in what is, after all, the most important department in the
State. In all of these books I find the same points raised. As at
present practised, education does not teach the younger generation
to love the beautiful or the intellectual: without such a love all
education is worth nothing. How to attain these affections is the next
question. One man advocates the abolition of examinations, another the
substitution of any method rather than that of rewards and punishments,
another sees salvation in the teaching of English literature, geography
and history, to the exclusion of the classics, and the cutting down of
mathematics--but somehow I can't make much of these books on theory.
I make marginal notes, underline passages, copy out good advice and I
try to put what I believe to be practicable into practice, but on the
whole I am left somewhat cold. I am on the search for a rich mine and,
although I often feel that I am near it, I never quite succeed in doing
more than unearthing one precious morsel of ore. In some ways the Head
Master was right when he told me to read no books on education. He was
right because I find nothing really new there. I am told to foster a
boy's imagination: I spend all my time in trying to do this, and should
do so even if I had read nothing whatever about education.
Only on Sunday nights, after a peculiarly good sermon and inspiring
hymns, can one at all reach the mood in which it is possible to discuss
quite openly with boys exactly what education means to you and ought to
mean to them. Instead of rushing out of chapel and fighting for places
at the sideboard in Common Room over the chicken and salmon, I go to my
rooms and talk quietly to such boys as can get leave to come then. Most
House-masters refuse to let their boys come to my rooms at all during
lock-up. They think my influence is quite definitely pernicious and
immoral. In other words I try to develop the imagination.