Copplestone, who is a House-master of a very religious turn of mind. He
dislikes corporal punishment and is hence looked upon as anæmic both
by his boys and his colleagues. He reads (quaintly enough) nothing but
Arnold Bennett. I go up to his rooms and talk by the hour about "The
Old Wives' Tale," "Clayhanger," and "Hilda Lessways": he is rather a
pitiable sort of man: he feels that he owes his allegiance to the old
school, and yet he feels that we represent the humanitarian side of
education. He is like Sir Thomas More, torn between his reason and
emotion: like Sir Thomas More he is going to suffer for his ill-timed
birth. Had he been born ten years earlier he would have been a
whole-hearted upholder of _l'ancien régime_. Had he been born ten years
later he would have been one of us and not cared a rap about the old
men or tradition. His only course is to resign and become a village
priest: he would be admirable with old ladies, and the younger members
of his congregation would approve of him because of his love for Arnold
Bennett. Here he behaves like Shelley's mother, alternately petting
and spoiling his boys, punishing them out of all proportion to their
offence at one moment, only to let them off and feed them extravagantly
the next. The result is that no boy can tell what he is going to do.
He is quite unreliable: he allows himself to be hopelessly "ragged"
for two days and then flares up and half kills a quite inoffensive
youngster who happens to cough.
I feel really sorry for him, for no one cares for him. He has
successfully fallen between two stools and become despised by both the
great opposing forces on the staff. He is neither new nor old, hot nor
cold, and exactly fulfils that horrible prophecy of Ezekiel about being
spewed out of the mouth of all parties.
Thank Heaven this term is over. I haven't learnt much more about my
job: I have had some illusions shattered: I have luckily made a few
more friends, but boys are queer--one is apt to offend them without
in the least knowing why. I shouldn't care to spend my time, like
Smithson, who lives for nothing but to curry favour with every boy he
meets: he's as bad as the type of boy who always "sucks up" to masters,
the very worst sort of creature. Smithson "treats" them all lavishly:
he makes fun of the weaklings and the unpopular, he "toadies" to the
prefects and generally makes a damned fool of himself. He doesn't
see, poor devil, that popularity, like Fortune, is a fickle jade, and
only pursues those who take no notice of her at all. Good God! Fancy
becoming a schoolmaster in order to be popular!
_May 4, 1911_
This has been one of the best Easter holidays I can remember. Stapleton
managed to get a month's sick leave from his curacy and we set off
for Oxford and the Cotswolds, to try to regain something of the
irresponsible gaiety of Oxford days. I had no idea how hateful the
country round Radchester was until I got back to the City of Spires.
It seemed impossible to believe that only two years ago I had still
to take my Finals, that I was disporting myself on the upper river
and the Cher, lazily enjoying all the sweets of life and now--well, I
felt about a hundred years old at the end of last term. There was no
beauty or interest anywhere or in anything, and then Stapleton wired
for me--and since then life has been one all too short ecstasy. We
stayed in Oxford just long enough to buy tobacco, a few books and some
clothes, and then set out on foot to go over again some of the country
we had learnt to love so well as undergraduates. Rucksacks on back, we
climbed Cumnor Hill on a glorious spring morning and made our way down
to Bablock Hythe and then kept along by the river for the rest of the
day: we strolled languidly and talked rabidly about our scholastic and
church experiences, our disappointments and successes. The air cleared
our minds: we evolved great schemes of new schools and new religions,
undefiled by effete traditions. Gradually the beauty of the meadows and
the old-world villages made us forget our worries and we gave ourselves
up to the enjoyment of the time. We travelled without map or guide
and just wandered at will. When we saw an inn that we liked we stayed
there, and ate and drank ourselves drowsy. At night-time, when the
bar-parlours were closed and we had reluctantly to say good night to
the labourers who came in and gave their views on world-politics, we
used to read for a little, and then to a ten hours' sleep.
I had taken the "Note Books of Samuel Butler" as my pocket companion
for this journey, and I never took a book which served its purpose
so well. In compact paragraphs the philosopher sums up with amazing
shrewdness, humour and insight into the human mind all that he
discovered to be interesting or worth repeating. The "Note Books"
are crammed with the cream of his thinking on every sort of subject,
science, music, literature, religion, architecture, sheep-farming,
authorship--everything that could possibly appeal to any thinking man.
It is an invaluable book to argue about. Butler at least clears the
brain more than any writer except Swift. He scatters pedagogy and all
cant and humbug to the winds: just as the air of the Cotswolds scatters
all thoughts of Radchester from one's mind, so does Samuel Butler fill
it with new ideas and fresh weapons of thought.
Stapleton and I kept on discovering old Tudor houses with moats, and
churches containing carved screens and tombs of Crusading Knights. We
stayed for three days at an old mill at Tredington on the Fosse Way,
miles from any town or station, and there heard the farmers sing all
the old Gloucestershire folk-songs in the Wheatsheaf Inn.
This has been a wonderful holiday for me. I wonder how many men become
schoolmasters simply in order to be able to have such good holidays.
It is a great temptation to a man who cares nothing for education: he
can submit to the routine all the better if he is indifferent and has
no ideals. All he has to do is to sit tight for three months at a time;
he is certainly not bound to exert himself very severely by the letter
of his contract. Then come these golden weeks of lovely spring when he
may disport himself as Stapleton and I have done, prying into unknown
nooks and crannies of mediæval England, lazily wandering by hedgerow
and riverside, gossiping over gates to farmers, reading to his heart's
content on sunny beach or secluded meadow by day, or in the ingle-nook
by night. He has no cares, no worries: his salary will pay for all
these jaunts so long as he steers clear of London and big hotels. If
the truth were told, I think that the reason why a number of men enter
the profession is no more than the lure of possessing freedom for a
quarter of their lives.
I wonder if this is how old "Jumbo" Stockton became a master. He is a
most lovable fellow and quite content with life. He is associated with
none of the school activities; he plays no games except golf; he is not
in the corps (very few members of Common Room are); he never entertains
boys in his rooms; he does very little work and is always ready for
a chat or a walk at any hour of the day or night. He just purrs
contentedly like a cat and rambles on about Vacs. that he has spent in
the Ardennes or the Pyrenees, yachting round the coast of Scotland or
caravaning in the New Forest. His one business in life seems to be the
holidays; his rooms are filled with Baedekers, "Highways and Byways,"
and guides to every place under the sun. Of educational reform or
ideals, in other words, of shop he never talks. Most of us talk of
nothing else. Common Room conversation gets dreadfully oppressive at
times owing to the continued debates about rules and the characters
of endless boys. Stockton never enters into these controversies,
consequently he is never at daggers drawn with any of us. We all affect
to despise him, but secretly we are rather envious of his detachment.
He seems quite popular with the boys, he finds that it pays to adopt
a strict demeanour; his work is never shirked and he rarely has to
punish any one. I sometimes wonder whether he does not feel a sudden
pang when one of his old associates at Oxford comes to the front after
years of struggling at the Bar, in politics, or the Church, and leaves
him behind in the race of life. Yet I have never met a more contented
man. He doesn't regard teaching as anything but a sinecure: his main
occupation in life is travel. He is rather like a city clerk who goes
up to his office every day solely in order to earn enough to take a
holiday. The difference lies in the fact that Stockton gets his reward
three times a year, the clerk only once; the master gets three months,
the clerk (with luck) three weeks.
I suppose that I may regard myself as exactly the opposite of Stockton
in every way. I live for my work: he lives for his holidays. When the
term is over I love to get away principally because Radchester would be
intolerable once the boys were gone, secondly because I want to fill
myself up with new ideas, to develop my theory that the cult of beauty
and imagination is the whole duty of the schoolmaster. I rarely forget
the school in the holidays. All the time that I am exploring new scenes
I am storing up memories which I hope to use in my work. All my talks
with Stapleton during these last few weeks have been so much sifting of
matter which I want to get clear before I start on a new term.
The difficulty is that so few of the men in Common Room think it
necessary to do more than prepare the textbooks they propose to read
with their forms, while I read up all I can on social problems. I
strive to discover new methods of interesting boys in the conditions
of life outside school. In so doing I am frequently attacked on the
ground that I am making them restless and dissatisfied with their
narrow round at school. I am not certain that restlessness is a thing
to be condemned: unless you are discontented with abuses you will never
stir a finger to reform them, and unless a boy leaves school firmly
convinced that it is his duty to leave the world better than he found
it, education means nothing.
Stapleton has gone back to work reinvigorated, fully determined to bear
with the many thorns in his flesh, in the shape of irritating curates,
the dead weight of indifference to religion, morality, or high ideals
in the bulk of his parishioners, with notes for a dozen sermons in his
head, and a healthy conviction that in spite of temporary setbacks the
world really is progressing.
I return to Radchester determined to alter for the better the code of
morality of the school, to make boys see that work is not a disgraceful
thing to be avoided whenever possible, but the only means by which any
one can equip himself to fight the battle of life: I return determined
to live at peace with my colleagues so far as it is possible, to be
more sociable and less critical, to dwell more insistently upon the
things that matter, and to try to wean away my boys from spending
themselves upon unworthy objects, to foster a love for all that is pure
and good and holy and to appreciate the millions of manifestations
of Beauty that nature displays even at Radchester for our spiritual
delectation.
VII
_June 4, 1911_
We've been back a month and many things have happened since I last
wrote in my diary.
In the first place Marshall has gone. I am much too near the event to
be able to judge of it sanely and I can't write of it at length. He was
always antagonistic to me. I can't say I liked him but I tried never
to show my aversion. He was repulsive in every way, but his sermons
were good: he was a good disciplinarian and teacher. Boys in his form
were at any rate thoroughly taught. In mine they fail because I always
attempt too much. I envied him his gifts a good deal.
The reason of my quarrel with him was Daventry. Daventry is in his
House and in my form and is the most astonishing youth I have yet come
across. He has a fertile brain and his sole object in life is "to do
every one down": he will probably end in prison or Park Lane. He is
quite unscrupulous (I have already found him rummaging among my letters
and this diary to find out things about masters and boys): he finds
me useful just at present, because he can sponge on me for food and
books: he reads and eats omnivorously. He has decided gifts and is safe
for a good scholarship at Oxford unless he gets sacked first, which is
exceedingly likely. Somehow he has the trick of getting out of all
the scrapes he finds himself in: he has the power of making people
believe him, even after he has deceived them before. He haunts my rooms
night and day. Marshall resented this and forbade him to come except
on business. He immediately invented business by writing verses and
essays, which he produced for my inspection at the rate of about two a
day.
After all it hurt me to be told by Marshall that my influence on the
boy was bad. I am afraid Daventry is bad through and through, but
I'm going to make a big effort to cast out the devils in him before
he leaves. There are signs of grace certainly: he is very emotional
and is passionately fond of reading and music. I have lately bought
a gramophone, and any records that he wants to hear I buy for him at
once; consequently, I find him in my rooms when I come in from games
with a rapt expression on his face, having spent the entire afternoon
by himself, giving himself up to the joy of hearing good music. He cuts
games with impunity--if there is any likelihood of trouble he forges
a "leave"; he is disconcertingly open with me in these things. Having
put me in a difficult position by relying on me not to give him away,
he divulges one scheme after another for outwitting authority. That he
needs very careful handling I naturally see, but why Marshall should
have taken it for granted that I only do the boy harm I don't know.
Anyway, Marshall did his best to prevent my seeing Daventry at all.
That naturally only piqued the boy to try to circumvent him in every
possible way. Things came to such a pass that I had to let Marshall
know that he was driving the boy to extremities which he might regret.
It was rather silly of me. He rated me loudly before all Common Room
for interfering in another man's business. He then launched into a
diatribe against the uppishness and "infallibility" of the junior
masters, and declared that the school was quickly being ruined by the
new blood. He ranted at some length and for a wonder I kept silent and
listened to it all without comment.
And now this awful thing has happened. Daventry kept away from me
when I told him that there was no other course open. He went about
threatening vengeance on Marshall, and even started writing to me by
post. He was badly "hipped" at being deprived of music and books and
food. I don't believe he cares a tuppenny curse about me.... Then came
that never-to-be-forgotten Sunday morning when I found him in my rooms
after breakfast with a small, untidy fag in tow. They both looked as
though they had been condemned to the guillotine.
"Hello, Daventry," I began, "what on earth are you doing here? Don't
you know----" He cut me short.
"Erskine has something very important to say to you, sir," he broke in,
in a voice I scarcely recognized as his.
"All right; fire away, my son," I replied. "Get it off your chest,
whatever it is--all the same I don't quite see what Daventry is doing."
"He--he made me come, sir," said Erskine.
He then told his story. It was so revolting that I first refused to
believe it; I thought it was some damnable scheme of Daventry's, got
up to ruin his House-master--I nearly kicked both of them downstairs
without hearing them to a finish. Instead of which I went straight to
the Head and took them with me.
Marshall went on Tuesday. Every one believes that he is seriously
ill: after this term they will give out that he has retired. I have
lately wondered whether I ought not to have gone to see him and told
him that I knew: couldn't it have been possible to keep him on at his
post? Never again shall I move a finger towards the undoing of any man,
however much an enemy of mine he may be. All Marshall's interest in
life was bound up in Radchester. I am daily assaulted by fears lest he
should commit suicide: his blood will be on my head if he does.
Expulsion is no cure either in man or boy. It's a frightful confession
of our own weakness. It's our fault that Marshall went wrong: Common
Room ought to have sweetened his life so that such malpractices would
have been impossible to him; instead of that the ugliness and pettiness
of the life he led there, the miserable lack of real friendliness all
combined to undo him. There are men here who can extract sweetness
from their life. What could be finer than the devotion of Patterson to
Northcote? Both these men have been on the staff for years. Neither
would accept any job, however lucrative, unless he could take the other
with him. They live in each other's pockets: they are as close as man
and wife: their friendship is strong enough to survive any momentary
difference of opinion. They discuss their methods of education, the
boys they take, the games they play, the books they read--everything
together. They spend all their holidays in each other's company and it
is impossible to know the one without the other. Neither of them would
be capable of a mean action--they are a beacon-light to all the rest
of us.
I wonder if I shall stay on here interminably friendless, and soured
like most of the others. It's a rotten prospect. Now of course the
boys keep me fresh, but as the years roll on I shall become more and
more unfitted for any other profession and get further away by reason
of my age from sympathizing with the youth of the time. Yet there are
some men, Heatherington is one of them, who keep perennially young:
they carry their boyishness with them to the grave. They can understand
youth's difficulties as well at sixty-one as at twenty-one. I wish I
knew the secret of this.
At present I can play games and take an active part in Corps work and
so keep in touch with most of the boys I want to know, but when I am
no longer able to do these things I shall lose touch with a generation
that knows not Joseph and become despised like old "Soap-Suds," who
thirty years ago was the hero of the school owing to his athletic
prowess. I suppose the secret is that games ought not to count for
so much as they do. No boy despises Heatherington, yet he can't play
"Rugger" any more. Privately among themselves, of course, the boys
"rag" his peculiarities, but they stand in fear of him and quake
inwardly as they hear his footsteps coming down the passage, and old
boys can testify how deep their love for him is.
I suppose one of the few rewards of the schoolmaster is that his
name is bandied about in all the strange places of the earth. Old
Radcastrians meet in the Himalayas, on the high seas, in a fever camp,
on a lonely ranch, and they immediately begin to discuss their old
masters. Mostly they speak of them with love if not with reverence.
Our little mannerisms and tricks, which we imagine are known only to
ourselves, lie open to them and endear us to them. They roar with
laughter over our peculiar phraseology, our methods of punishment,
our impotent rage over little things like chipped desks and false
quantities.
I should like boys to remember me by the books I introduced them to: I
like to think of them equipped with a taste for the best literature,
gloating over Conrad or Doctor Johnson, Charles Lamb or E. V. Lucas,
new God or old Giant, in some forsaken place where ordinary cheap
reading would not satisfy any of the heartache, or remove any of the
sense of desolation that comes upon the mind at such times.
Each time I come back to school I try a different method with my
English classes. If only I had more time I really believe I could
achieve something. At present all I can do is to read a short story
of Stevenson like "Markheim" or "Thrawn Janet" and then get the form
to reproduce the substance of it, or to rewrite it from the point of
view of one of the other characters. I have found this method pay
very well. Once jog a boy's imagination and he will produce quite
original and diverting matter. The difficult thing is to hit on the
particular sort of literature that boys like. Only too frequently
Shakespeare palls; Milton, Pope and Wordsworth are quite beyond the
average boy. On the other hand they cannot have too much of balladry.
"Tam Lyn," "Sir Patrick Spens," "Sir Cauline," and the rest they love.
So with mediæval legends like "Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight."
Most boys after a careful introduction to the life of the age of
Queen Anne and the curious characters of Swift, Steele, Addison and
Defoe, appreciate quickly the beauties of the _Spectator_, and are
only too glad as a weekly essay to interpolate a paper on some foible
rampant in that school. Boswell, too, they can tackle if only you
prepare them by giving a Macaulayesque account of Johnson's quaint
tricks and mannerisms. Spenser, Shelley and Keats I find are only for
the few. Most of them love Byron. Tennyson, like Dickens, they have
been taught to revere at home. They are not very fond of either. But
Browning and even Meredith quickly become bosom friends of theirs,
as do the Pre-Raphaelites. But by far the greatest boom at present
is the Masefield cult. I read "The Everlasting Mercy" when it came
out in the _English Review_ to all my sets and they were intoxicated.
Hallows got to hear of this and was furious with me for introducing "so
foul-mouthed and immoral-minded a poet" to boys. Poor old Masefield. I
don't suppose he reckoned with the Public School attitude when he set
out on his mission of outspokenness. In order to keep the problems of
modern life before my form I strew my classroom with daily and weekly
papers, monthly and quarterly reviews, and demand précis of all the
more important articles before or after debates on all sorts of modern
problems. I have started to do more original work myself. The _World of
School_ has accepted two or three articles on educational reform which
I submitted to them, and I now have the lust of authorship on me badly.
It's a very wearing disease. I am for ever planning books. I want to
write a complete English course, eliminating all that nonsense about
weak and strong verbs, different uses of the gerund and all grammar
grind and analysis.
What I want is an historical survey of the whole of English literature,
liberally interspersed with examples, with a list of the books they
ought to buy and enjoy reading, imaginative questions which should spur
them on to original composition in verse and prose with a stimulating
introduction on why, how, and what we should read. I would make such
books as Arnold Bennett's "Literary Taste" and "The Author's Craft"
compulsory for every boy in every school in the kingdom. I would also
make every boy learn by heart those passages in "Sesame and Lilies"
where Ruskin points out the value of reading in practical life.
But all this would not gain a boy many marks in a modern examination,
and we live or die by results in examinations. English papers seem to
me to be the worst set of all. What can it profit a man to know the
context of obscure passages in Shakespeare if he has not got the spirit
of the play in him actively shaping his own life? If a boy does not
feel the Hamlet or the Richard II within him shouting for utterance
when he reads a Shakespeare play, he is doing himself no good at all.
The whole argument brings one back to beauty and imagination. I want to
see every boy's study crammed with copies of the "World's Classics,"
the "Everyman" and the "Home University Library." There is no excuse
for anybody not having read standard works at this time of day.
I try to instil a love of books into my forms by telling them of men
like George Gissing, with whom it became a question of breakfast or a
precious volume acquired in a second-hand shop: a book must cost you
something before you can expect really to value it at its true worth.
As Ruskin says, we despise books simply because they are accessible.
I've always had this book-fever on me. I remember even as a small boy
suffering unduly from the pangs of hunger, going from fruiterer to
book-shop and from book-shop to fruiterer, wondering which I really
wanted more, the romance or the pound of cherries. I know that I
always hated myself when I succumbed to the latter temptation, for the
cherries were soon eaten but the delights of the book were perennial.
_July 4, 1911_
The joys of the Coronation were not for us. Some of the Corps went
down to London to line the streets, but the rest of us went into camp
and had a gorgeous time. We spent the time bathing and washing up, and
celebrating Coronation festivities in all the villages near by. We made
speeches and helped to feed myriads of children: we led processions and
drank vast quantities of liquid at other people's cost. Money seemed to
be poured out in honour of George V.