so exciting as Aldershot: there are no baths and no towns to visit,
but I like the bare wildness of it all, the undulating hills, the wide
views on every side, the clumps of trees, the gorse and the bracken.
They didn't work us very hard this year, owing to the fact that there
had been some row about overdoing it at Aldershot last August. That
didn't worry me. I don't come to camp to work. I come to mix with as
many boys as possible, to get to know their little ways--I come to join
in the "rags" at "sing-song," to see what sort of material the other
schools produce, to laugh at the amazing scenes in the officers' mess,
to get back some of the sleep I seem to have lost at school, to learn
a little military work, to live an open-air rough-and-tumble life for
a few days, and in short to enjoy myself. I had to leave early this
year in order to take my M.A. It was the first time I had been back to
Oxford since I came down. Of all pointless things in life the taking
of an M.A. seems about the most prominent. Why should I be supposed to
be a more responsible creature because I pay a few more guineas into
the already overfull University chest for the privilege of exchanging
my rabbit's-fur hood for a red and black silk one? Anyway I followed
the convention and felt inordinately important and wise for about two
hours! Oxford in the Long Vac. might please Charles Lamb but I hurried
away as soon as I could. I just glanced at a few shops, reminded some
long-suffering tradesmen that I was still alive and then caught a train
for Minehead, where Tony met me fresh from camp. He had never been in
Devon before and I had invited him down in order that he should join me
in the walk which I cannot repeat too often. We went to Cloutsham Ball
to see a meet of the Devon and Somerset staghounds, and had the luck
to see a kill at Porlock Weir: we slept two nights at the Ship Inn and
talked to Carruthers Gould and several other celebrities we met there;
then we tramped over the Deer Forest to Badgeworthy Water, in which I
fell and had to waste an afternoon in a croftsman's cottage while my
flannels were dried.
We slept that night at the Valley of Rocks Hotel at Lynton. I've never
seen so many foreigners in Devon. Somehow I resent the presence of
these strangers in my native land: I feel that I want to shut the gates
and only permit such as can prove themselves worthy to gain access to
the Garden of Eden. It is dreadful to hear polyglot noises at breakfast
and condescending praises of Watersmeet and Woody Bay, Parracombe and
Combe Martin from Germans. Luckily very few of these visitors go far
afield. Most of them only come to eat and drink and lounge in the
gardens and sleep. They don't really penetrate Devon at all: the secret
of her charm still remains with her own children, and with those to
whom her children divulge it. Tony was in rhapsodies over the cliff
walk to Ilfracombe and delighted my aunts by praising all the scenery
and giving detailed reasons for his appreciation.
_September 20, 1912_
Tony only stayed in Ilfracombe for a week, but we made the most of our
time. He got on famously with my grandfather and kept him thoroughly
amused. We bathed twice a day and went to all the shows we could find,
coons and concerts and plays in the Alexandra Hall. After he had gone
I was left alone with my aunts and grandfather. I used to read Seton
Merriman aloud to them at nights. My grandfather spends most of his
time attempting to solve puzzles in _John Bull_, _Tit-Bits_, _Answers_,
and so on. A strange craze to occupy a man of eighty. He is usually to
be found at the County Club, of which he is the leading spirit.
My aunts and I go round district-visiting, picnicking at Woolacombe
and Lee, getting up amusements for Bible Classes and Sunday School
scholars, and calling on all the residents. Tiring of having no active
occupation I started coaching an Anglo-Indian boy who was staying at
Combe Martin, which I found interesting work. He was a delightful
fellow, typical of all that is best in the Charterhouse type. I felt
that I was paying my way by working with him, and thoroughly enjoyed it.
In my spare time, spurred on by my grandfather's efforts, I started
going in for the weekly _Westminster_ competitions, without meeting
with any success. My main enjoyment was watching the Cardiff and
Swansea trippers coming off the channel steamers and exploring the
delights of Ilfracombe. It is for these people that the shops spread
out their garish wares of cheap meretricious novels, vulgar post cards,
hideous china and other mementoes. I ate pounds and pounds of cream and
was growing fat and lazy, when I suddenly found myself called away to
Chesterfield to coach a boy for the London Matriculation at the rate of
ten guineas for ten days. The contrast was too awful.
Chesterfield is one of the grimiest and most hideous of towns on
the borders of Derbyshire and Yorkshire. My pupil was a slack,
good-for-nothing, over-affluent, overgrown youth who had to pass in
English, knowing none. His father, who was a colliery owner, happened
also to be a Director of Education for the county, and was anxious to
know what education really meant.
He had read Huxley, Spencer and Darwin, and no one else. I asked him
to come along and join his son and the three of us went through the
history of English literature from Shakespeare to the present day. The
father was really interested, the son frankly bored. In mathematics
the boy knew far more than I did, but he could not frame an English
sentence for any money. Neither could he see the use of poetry, drama,
novel or essay.
I was taken to the Corporation Baths, I was motored all over the place,
I encountered some of the rudest people I have ever met in my life,
and I was thoroughly miserable for ten whole days in a house which
"stank" of money and where everything was uncomfortable and wrong.
Work was the only relief. The abjectness of the shops and the people's
faces threatened to drive me mad, so great was the contrast between
Chesterfield and my Devon home. How any one could live for choice in
an ugly misbegotten place like this I can't think. It seemed to me
to invite crime or at least criminal thoughts. The meals were one
long unendurable agony: high tea of pine-apple, blancmange and tinned
salmon at 5.45, 7.30 or 8.45, according as "the master" returned from
work. I went hungry most days. After a day I found myself studying
this new type closely: the father collects the most evil oil-paintings
and the most exquisite old oak furniture. They have a pigsty in the
front garden, which occupies their spare hours. The old man is deeply
religious, very methodical, Liberal in politics, very quiet, very
anxious not to spend money, as honest as the day, fond of power and
passionately devoted to his son. He keeps a journal containing a list
of all the books he reads and his opinions of them.
I went into barracks at Exeter for a few days before returning to
Ilfracombe, to keep my hand in, but I was chafing all the time to
get back to the sea and freedom. The convention of mess is only less
nauseating than that of Common Room.
For the last fortnight of the holidays I went up home to stay with my
people and had to submit to being shown to people as a sort of prize
pig. A round of tea-fights and bridge-drives, walks and sleep. I don't
seem to be able to get going with any original writing. I wonder why
in the world they give us such long holidays. In eight weeks one ought
to be able to achieve something, write a novel or at any rate perform
something useful. Instead of which we travel up and down the country
and waste the precious hours--I hate not being actively occupied
every hour of every day--life is damned dull that way. There must be
thousands of men who would give anything to get as much holiday as
I do, whereas I chafe and long to be back at work again weeks before
the time comes to return. It's pleasant to get a chance of seeing
my father and mother, though they are never very communicative. My
father is out visiting in the parish all and every day, and only gets
back late at night, and my mother is usually very busy in the house
or shopping. I accompany them in their walks as a general rule, but
they are not interested in talk about Radchester--they like to discuss
books, but my mother reads little but theological and philosophical
treatises. My father lives for humour: he is amazingly witty in himself
(his letters are a treasure-house of shrewd and excruciatingly funny
character-sketches of his parishioners) and he is passionately fond
of wit in others. I wish I inherited some of this gift. I find that
I am too deadly serious. I get too excited over my schemes to reform
mankind. He is too kindly and tolerant, too good-natured and easy-going
to try to shock people out of their indifference. My mother looks on my
educational ideals as a sort of mania out of which I shall grow when I
come to years of discretion: she thinks all education nonsense and a
mistake.
I find that I become pretty well the ideal lotus-eater at home. I sleep
from 10 P.M. to 9 in the morning and then read whatever I can lay my
hands on if it is wet, or go out in the parish if it is fine. If I
write, which is seldom, I rarely give up more than a couple of hours a
day to it. I ought to imitate A. C. Benson and write two or three hours
regularly daily, year in, year out--but I never do anything regularly.
If I were ever to write a novel I should finish it in a fortnight or
three weeks. I can't bear to have anything hanging over my head. I am
always afraid lest I should die in the middle and then find all the
good work go for nothing. I wish I could cultivate the calm patience
of these men, who work steadily for fifty years to produce some little
thesis. Would I had the calm assurance of Lord Acton or Lord Morley.
If I could only cultivate a sense of arrangement. Here am I a strenuous
and not altogether unsuccessful teacher of English, and I can't even
string paragraphs together properly. That's why I like writing up my
diary. I don't have to worry about arrangement. I can just write down
things as they occur to me, matters of infinite moment cheek by jowl
with ephemeral topics of the hour. I have been reading Montaigne's
"Essays" of late and derived considerable comfort therefrom. I always
carry a book about in my pocket wherever I go, one of the "World's
Classics" for preference: it effectually prevents me from getting
peevish if I have to wait for a train or in a shop to be attended to.
These holidays I have read very thoroughly John Stuart Mill "On
Liberty" and Hobbes's "Leviathan" in this way. Oh for a lucid pen
like Mill's or an orderly mind like Hobbes'. Such books are best read
quietly and in small quantities at a time. When I read a novel I tear
the heart out of it, just as Doctor Johnson did. There are very few
novels I can't get through in a day. I usually sit up to finish them
if I can't manage it otherwise. My mother says that I can't possibly
remember what I read and that it's pure waste of time to read in this
way, but I think I generally manage to squeeze the best out of a book
in this way.
Anyway I was born to hurry: I think it's a vice, but impetuosity and
turbulence are two characteristics that I must have been endowed with
by my fairy godmother.
It is this same idiosyncrasy which prevents me from being a good
letter-writer. I write to dozens and dozens of boys and friends like
Ruth, but I never express myself adequately, simply because I don't
take enough trouble.
If genius really means the taking of infinite pains I must be the least
of a genius that ever lived, for I only write when it is easy to me,
and on subjects that don't require that I should refer to handbooks all
the time. On the other hand, Samuel Butler has some comforting light to
shed on that topic.
_October 5, 1912_
Eight weeks is too long a holiday. One gets out of touch with all
things pertaining to discipline and rules. As time goes on one begins
to chafe less at what seem ridiculous restrictions; they become part of
the day's work, just as I suppose if I were in the Army the red tape of
the orderly room would not worry me after a year or two.
I have just had young Pollock staying with me. He is now a gunner of
two years' standing. It seems only yesterday I was training him for
Woolwich. He can't understand why I stay in so heathen an atmosphere
as a school. The rules he simply ignores. I find him smoking on his
way across the square to breakfast, turning on my gramophone while
the boys are at work, sitting in my window-seat in full gaze of the
school, glass in hand, drinking whisky. He has no sort of respect
for my seniors, but swears genially in Common Room, seizes the best
chairs, takes up the whole of the fireplace and the only copy of the
_Times_, while Hallows and Co. gnash their teeth, purple with rage in
the background. The best of it is that he is quite unaware that he is
giving offence. He is extraordinarily genial, if somewhat condescending
in his manner towards them. It is a pure joy to watch him with them:
he so exactly represents the world's attitude towards the whole race
of ushers. "They are poor, ignorant, down-at-heel devils, but it's as
well to be kind to them." That is the sort of feeling that Pollock has,
I know: you can see it in his every action. I suppose the difference
between Common Room and a gunner mess is fairly wide.
I have just been reading F. R. G. Duckworth's "Leaves from a
Pedagogue's Sketch-Book." I wish I had his gift for writing. I could a
tale unfold of life at a Public School which would dispel a few hundred
of the fatuous superstitions that have grown, I know not how, round our
ancient homes of learning. But if I did even so much as reveal this
diary I should be out of a job in a week.
We are in the middle of one of the more delectable sorts of row. A few
days ago a field-day was fixed against Blowborough, but it had to be
scratched owing to disease on their part. A House match was hastily
substituted and duly posted at 12.45 on the day. One of the Houses
refused to turn out because they were not given longer warning. Hallows
is in a fine state of frenzy. What will happen to the captain of the
offending House I can't think. Games "bloods" do occasionally get
obstreperous, but do not often care to risk Hallows' wrath. I shall be
interested to see the _dénouement_.
I have been into Scarborough with Pollock to see _Passers-By_ and
_Hindle Wakes_. Houghton's play seems to me to be epoch-making. Quite
apart from its merits as a play the subject was (to me) so novel. It
expresses so much of the new spirit, the spirit that refuses to be
limited by the narrow conventions of its fathers and carves out a new
line for itself regardless of public opinion. It seems to me that Fanny
Hawthorn was quite justified in refusing to marry the man she went off
with. He was just an amusement, an adventure. Two wrongs can never make
a right. She wanted a week-end of liberty, excitement--call it what
you will, and took it, ready to pay her part of the damage.... The
evil certainly does not lie in her refusal to marry the man, but, if
there is any (which I take leave to doubt), in going off with him in
the first place. There are people who have to learn what life means by
getting burnt: she was lucky enough only to get singed and not ruined
for life. Her sort does not go on the streets. She probably settled
down to married life with a man after her own heart very soon. But
does the quiet humdrum pleasure of safe marriage ever give the golden
ecstatic moments that come from dangerous romantic passionate episodes
of a day? The audience made me acutely sick. They shivered with delight
at the "daring" of it--though what there is "daring" in it I don't
know. It is more like a sermon than a play.
We are acting _The Great Adventure_ at Radchester: just half a dozen of
us in Common Room suddenly hit upon the idea. We have the new Bursar
for stage manager, a fellow called Harding. He has been all sorts
of things, including music-hall proprietor, actor and stage manager
of a suburban theatre. He does not find it easy to fall into line
with our rigid conventions. Outwardly he conforms rather well, being
a born actor, but he manages to live two quite distinct lives, one
which pleases the heart of the Head Master, energetic at his work,
asking no questions and simply doing his duty, the other, lighthearted
and gay away in the town where he spends a great deal of his time.
In conjunction with one of the music masters he is writing a musical
comedy: they practise scenes every night. It is most ludicrously silly,
but certainly not worse than 90 per cent. of the musical comedies I
have seen. Harding has a distinct turn for witty lyrical writing, built
on a lifelong devotion to W. S. Gilbert.
The "club" has improved since I first joined it: we all now try to
improvise something to earn our cake and whisky. Harding writes songs,
Benson puts them to music, Jimson and I dance or tell stories, some one
plays a banjo or a violin, and we rouse the night air with a catch.
I don't altogether like even all the members of the club, but when I
get very lonely or depressed in my own rooms I go there, in order to
forget myself awhile. I don't seem able to make any close friend on
the staff. There is no one there, for instance, who matters to me half
so much as Tony, and at times I doubt whether I ought to take up so
much of his attention. After all, a boy at school comes to play and
work among his equals, not to mix with grown-ups. Tony has too many
advanced ideas, owing, I suppose, to the books I lend him and the talks
we have so frequently together. I must try to deny myself the pleasure
of his society more than I do. Of late I have been extraordinarily
pleased at some of the work which several boys have shown up. Really
quite a number of the short stories and verses I get are worthy of
publication in some magazines. I try to encourage boys to submit their
best stuff after I have sub-edited it to various editors with whom I
have dealings. Tony has already had one poem accepted by the _Monthly
Magazine_.
I find that the average boy drinks in Swinburne, Morris and Henley
with extraordinary relish when he won't look at Keats and Shelley.
The first business is to get him really interested in anything:
the decadent phase will soon pass. I tried "The Dynasts" on them
and failed miserably. The really good stuff is utterly beyond
them--perhaps they'll remember later on and come back to it with
proper understanding. I must share my own great joys and discoveries
in literature: I can't keep a really fine thing like "The Dynasts" to
myself. Common Room won't listen: they think I'm crazy on the moderns
for whom they have no use--not that they read the ancients, but they do
allow them a place in education. The moderns they abuse as mere wasters
of time. I have been trying for various Head Masterships and been
offered that of Chipping Campden. I was particularly tempted to accept
it at first, because of the beauty of the place. Mais, Stapleton, and
I used to walk out there from Oxford on Sundays: it is one of the most
perfect mediæval towns I know, but it is probably too remote from the
bustle of life for a man like myself. Anyway I refused it.
_December 20, 1912_
We have had some good sermons this term from visitors. One man on
the Beauty of Holiness tried to make us see what there was of beauty
in even this arid wilderness: he succeeded rather well--but then,
of course, he doesn't have to live here. He vainly imagines that we
consider the sea to be the real sea instead of a waste of grey water,
ugly and cruel. Then we had a most famous man, who tried to make all
the school go and confess their vices to him: his mistake was to
imagine that there was but one vice and that one practised by 90 per
cent. of the school. You can't do much with a man who has got a bee
in his bonnet to that extent. Although he was sincere and obviously
affected many of the boys, he rather irritated me. I wish I could
settle in my mind what is the sort of sermon boys ought to have. The
one we had last term on keeping the Divine spark alive was certainly
the best I have ever heard, but that may be because I agreed with every
word about the necessity of cultivating individuality and imagination.
In some ways it would be good for us to hear more about Church
doctrine: we are really rather vague about our beliefs.
I am afraid the "ragging" of Koenig is not confined to the boys: he
has lately been elected to the "club," and we do our level best to
make him drunk: we tell him the tallest of yarns about impossible old
customs which we celebrate for his benefit. He must think us--oh, I
don't know what he makes of us. In my heart I am really sorry for him.
Of late I have taken to going to see him by myself. Of course by now he
sees that he has been hopelessly "ragged" ever since he came, but he
has a wonderful belief that in the end he will settle down. When this
generation has passed on, he will be stricter and the younger boys will
reverence him. Poor devil, he doesn't realize that his name is already
a byword and that it will become a standing tradition to "rag" him for
all time. There is the case of old "Parsnips" Askew: he has been here
for thirty years and not a day passes without some silly trick being
passed upon him. Sometimes his form will come clad as if for amateur
theatricals with the excuse that they hadn't time to change, and they
will go on with their (imagined) rehearsal while he tries in vain to
teach. On other occasions they come in in uniform and drill; there are
endless variants: four or five will faint and the rest of the form rush
about in all directions for water or carry the "bodies" out and never
return.
I don't envy Askew his life at all. Boys are merciless devils when
they find they have a master in their power. It is all very well to
say that a man must have the whip-hand of his class. Once he has lost
it he stands precious little chance of ever regaining it. Koenig is
pathetically anxious to make good. For some obscure reason he loves the
life here and dreads every day lest he should receive notice to quit. I
suppose this love of "ragging" is ingrained. Although I sympathize with
and quite like the poor old ass, yet I am as bad as anybody at pulling
his leg. About three weeks ago four of us all pretended to be as drunk
as man can be and we knocked him about in a most shameful manner and
kicked up the devil of a row in his rooms, half wrecking the place. In
the end he had to put each of us to bed.
After _The Great Adventure_, in which I was too nervous to be much
good, I got bitten with the craze of acting, and made my Saturday
evening juniors prepare two short plays for the last night of term.
That has taken up every hour of my spare time lately and most of
my hard-earned salary, for I have to feed the whole cast at every
rehearsal.
We've got a wonderful new parson master this term who has any amount of
originality and cares for no authority. He preached the other day on
the text of "a _man_ bearing a pitcher of water," emphasizing the need
for _men_ to take upon themselves the duty of bearing religion into the
home and not leaving it to the women. I rather think that he fulfils my
ideal of a school preacher. He never has any notes, but simply talks in
a most personal way about the difficulties that beset him, problems of
public interest, even controversial topics. He, at any rate, tries to
rouse the intellectual and æsthetic faculties and he is inordinately
cheerful always in spite of wretched health.
Boys crowd to his rooms for spiritual advice. He is almost the perfect
mediator that a priest should be: his own devotion to God irradiates
from him at all times and in all places. He is ever gay and sunny, and
refuses resolutely ever to be drawn into the thousand little petty
quarrels in which the rest of us indulge: his own forms worship him.
I have made friends with several outcasts this term, boys who don't fit
into the scheme of things and are as a consequence morose, irritable
and unhappy. I try my best to make them see the point of school rules
and all the rest of the red tape against which they rebel, but I do so
in such an unconvincing, lukewarm way that I might just as well keep
silence. At any rate they have a refuge in my rooms and thank God
they take it. I have had a very good offer made me by the Head Master
of Welborough. He wants me at once. When I went to see the Head Master
about it he refused to let me go.
"Of course," said he, "if you choose to pay the school a term's salary
for breach of contract, I cannot prevent you from leaving but----"
I can't see myself able to forfeit a whole term's salary at any period
of my career.
So that's that! Of course I am not anxious to leave because of my
innumerable friends among the boys: I am rather like a cat in some
ways. If I had any sense I should take no notice of the Head, who
really loathes me, and go.
Three members of the staff are leaving. No one stays here long, and
really I don't wonder. There seems very little point in cutting oneself
right off from human life, or the chance of ever making any money or
any good thing out of life.
And yet I stay ... I am very like a cat.
XII
_December 31, 1912_