to arrive from all over the country. A good many Radchester boys and
masters, all my relatives, and friends of all sorts began to arrive in
Bath. We had an amazing number of presents, but those which touched me
most were from Heatherington's House and my form. So I'm not forgotten
even yet at Radchester. They had a lively time after I left. In my
place as a temporary substitute they got a parson who drank heavily
and had to be carried out of chapel twice. Because I am so poor and
because our house at Marlton is so small I was prevailed upon to sell
all my books, which I now see was one of the grossest mistakes I
ever committed in my life. At the time I thought of it as a piece of
heroism and great self-sacrifice. The episode reminds me of Charles
Lamb and the cake. As a matter of fact it was a piece of unmitigated
foolishness. I only got £50 for the lot, and the notes that I had made
in them might be worth that if I had kept and used them.
We were married with a great show of pomp and splendour on the sixth
of August. I didn't at all like the gorgeous ceremony: there were too
many people. It was too much of an orgie: far too much fuss was made
of us. As I look back it appears now as a medley of changing clothes,
cutting cake, drinking champagne, uttering platitudes to visitors,
complying with endless superstitions, and never seeing Elspeth. I had
no idea that there were so many million omens attached to weddings.
They must be very unlucky things. It began to mean something when the
day was nearly over and we found ourselves locked in a first-class
carriage bound for Porlock.
We had a room in the Ship Inn looking over the bay, and met some of the
most entertaining people it has ever been my fortune to come across.
No one suspected that we were a honeymoon couple: we were purposely
callous about each other's welfare in the presence of others and joined
with every party that was got up for any purpose. Most of the time we
spent in attending meets of the staghounds.
Every one in the hotel was there for the hunting, and the conversation
was a refreshing change after that of Common Room at Radchester. One
man in particular, called Monteith, who was up at Oxford with me, was
very struck with Elspeth and used to bring her great bunches of white
heather every night. I like to see her admired: it shows me that I
chose circumspectly.
We bathed every day and explored the combes and rivers and villages
in every direction. I know no more beautiful country than this for a
honeymoon: you can get quiet when you want it. We lunched nearly every
day among the whortleberries on the moor, far away from the sight
of any living creature: when we wanted to mix with society we only
had to drop down into Porlock, and there were always forty or fifty
people in the hotel willing and eager to be friendly. It was the most
consummately perfect setting for a wedding tour imaginable. There was
not a speck or flaw cast upon our complete happiness once during the
entire time. It was all too short: three weeks fled past like three
days and we got to know each other's little foibles and idiosyncrasies
and to make allowance for them.
We went as far afield as Ilfracombe, Lynton, Minehead and Exford: we
went on foot, by steamer, in dog-carts and coaches, and we were as
merry as crickets all the time. After it was over we went up home to
see my people and to introduce ourselves in the married state to the
villagers, who have known me since I was a boy. All this month I seem
to have been walking on air. I've forgotten there ever was such a place
as Radchester or that I ever nearly went mad because I had not Elspeth
by me. What I should do without her now God only knows. I only hope
and pray that we may live together to a ripe old age and die within
a few hours of each other. Then our lives will have been rounded off
completely, for as it is we are only happy in the possession of each
other. Nothing else contents us.
We went on to London after this in order to buy the requisite furniture
for our cottage. We accomplished this in a single day, spending about
£150 in all in equipping ourselves with a complete outfit from "cellar
to attic." We are now back again in Bath.
_September 6, 1913_
I don't like wasting all my days in this house in the Crescent. I seem
to have lost all my wild ideals on education: I have no boys now to
give my life for: all my hopes are centred upon one object, Elspeth,
and if she fails me I am undone indeed.
I spend my energies on writing silly letters to the daily papers on
the subject of the Olympic Games, of all footling things. Elspeth now
cries through half the night because she says I have changed and no
longer love her with that same passion that I once had for her. This
is quite untrue, but I can't make her see it. I seem to be a mass of
contradictions.
Bath seems to have lost its attraction for me now that I have nothing
to do except wait for the opening of term at Marlton. I find myself
pining for Radchester, the club, the cross-county runs, "Rugger,"
camp, bathing, boys to tea--and all the savage, healthy years of
apprenticeship while I was learning my job. I've read very little
except a novel called "Sinister Street," by Compton Mackenzie, which
seems to me to be at once very good and very bad. I don't like it so
much as "Carnival," but his pictures of his old Public School masters
are extraordinarily vivid and probably true. I wish I could write such
a book. I want to settle down to some serious writing, but I haven't
the patience to begin on a book, partly because I should immediately
begin to fear lest I should die before it was finished. I wish I could
rid myself of this silliness.
_September 11, 1913_
I have just been up to the Board of Education to be interviewed for a
lucrative post in India. I should dearly like to go and I have the job
definitely offered me, £600 a year to inspect the teaching of English
in Ceylon, but Elspeth is against it, so I shall have to refuse. I was
also offered £7 a week to sub-edit the Daily Tatler, but I could not of
course break my contract at Marlton, and they would not keep it open,
so that's off. I should like to be a journalist. The work would suit me
admirably.
I read "The Story of Louie," by Oliver Onions on my way south at night,
and arrived at Marlton at nine o'clock and walked up the hill through
the pretty narrow streets to my new home, which Elspeth and her mother
had prepared against my coming. It certainly is a great change after
Radchester. The only unfortunate thing is that I am no longer my own
master. I now shall have to be careful about dirty boots. Elspeth has
the last word as to where everything is to go. She and her mother went
to bed early and I went round the house on a tour of inspection. The
hall is really something to be proud of, with its bookcases and oak
chest and grandfather clock. The drawing-room is small but dainty;
most of the pictures are ordinary and cheap: we bought them at Boots'
for very little. The silver that we had for wedding presents is all
put out on mahogany tables, and there are photographs of Elspeth's
friends but none of mine, which irritated me momentarily. I loathe the
nondescript china ornaments on the mantelpiece. The dining-room closely
resembles my own rooms at Radchester. All my old Oxford signed proofs
of Blair Leighton and Dicksee take up the wall space and there are two
bookshelves. The study contains my bureau and all my special treasures.
In this room at least, I hope, that I shall be able to do as I like.
Our bedroom is large and yet very cosy. I think I am going to love this
house. At any rate I feel very proud at being a householder.
_September 19, 1913_
I have spent a week on my bicycle exploring the surrounding country
before term begins. It is glorious to live where people hunt, and there
are large houses, and cars passing the door (we are right on the main
London-Hastings road) and the villages are all snug and picturesque,
and there are heaps of ripping neighbours who call and look as if they
were going to entertain us lavishly. It is possible, too, to get down
to a real sea, how different from the so-called sea at Radchester, a
sea of blue and green flanked by great white Sussex cliffs. I feel most
extraordinarily at home and yet I funk the coming term: I don't know
how these boys will take to me. They are sure to be very different from
the Radchester boys. I doubt whether they'll be as boisterous or as
healthy. Time will show.
XIV
_October 4, 1913_
I have now had my first taste of life as a master at Marlton. The air
here is sluggish, warm and unhealthy. I never want to go out and I
always feel tired. There is none of the energy which one associated
with Radchester. The place is altogether different. In the first place
there is practically no Common Room life, which is perhaps a good
thing. We only gather in Common Room from 11 to 11.15 every morning for
"break." The masters live all over the town. There are eight houses and
each one is quite distinct from any other: the boys never mix. Most of
the staff are quite young. Of the elder ones I have come across the
officer commanding the Corps who is elderly (he has a son older than I
am), a parson, very good-natured and easy-going, but with an insatiable
desire for talking. He is the most gossipy man I ever met. His wife
is one of the sweetest women I ever met. We have dined there once,
but it was a dull meal. He monopolized the entire conversation. There
is another House-master parson, also old, who is very literary and
runs a select society, which meets every Sunday afternoon to read and
listen to papers on literary topics. I should like to belong to that.
Some day I hope to be elected. We have also dined there. Ponsonby is a
wonderful raconteur but rather eccentric in his habits: I should think
that he takes some knowing. The other House masters are all young and
all married. Every one here seems very well off as compared with the
Radchester masters. They all have private means. They ride, though not
often, to hounds, they own cars and motor-bicycles, and don't appear
to do very much work. Most of them live solely for games. I find that
I am getting more and more agitated at the games fetish. Although they
live under the shadow of the most inspiring church in the country,
and though the school buildings themselves are exceedingly beautiful,
the boys and masters alike seem to distrust beauty just as much as
the Radchester people did. There is one man with whom I have formed a
strong alliance. He, like myself, is a new-comer. He is unmarried, very
clever, and deserted the Foreign Office, where he held a good billet,
to come down to teach the Sixth. He is in the eyes of the school quite
mad. He is careless as to his clothes, wearing next to nothing on a
very cold day and arctically clad when it is warm and sunny. He has a
knack of forgetting what time it is and sets out for a walk when he
ought to be going into school. He is a real poet and a fine classic.
His name is Wriothesley and is already known as "the Rotter." On
Sundays he wears a top hat and immaculate morning clothes with a white
slip, white spats and patent-leather boots. Added to this he stammers
and is acutely nervous. The rest of the staff are not inspiring. There
are several "beefy Blues," a few slack men who take no interest in
anything that occurs in the school outside their form work, and one man
who ought to be a country squire, who presides over the local District
Council and spends all his energies on running the town. The boys are
all gentlemen, very slack, very quiet, care nothing for work and a very
great deal too much for "Rugger."
Unfortunately I have begun badly. Two articles that I wrote long ago on
Public School Reform have just found their way into print. Every one
here has read them and they all look on me as a dangerous innovator,
unpatriotic and disloyal. It is in vain that I point out that I said
these things of another school and under the stress of nerves. I am a
marked man. Whatever I do I shall be looked upon with suspicion. They
all think I am on the look-out for "copy." Elspeth does not much care
for the school people and I don't altogether blame her. The wives are
very cliquey, and think that they have a right to dictate to the wives
of the younger masters exactly as to how they should dress, how they
should behave, who they shall know and who they shall not know.
The society of Marlton is very snobbish and divided up into a myriad
different sets. At the top there is the Castle clique, who hunt and
play polo. Some of these are quite amusing. Then come the school
people, who keep to themselves. After them come the professional
clique. There are vast numbers of retired Indian military and civilian
people, who play bridge and walk about the country doing nothing in
particular: to these are attached the doctors, bankers, solicitors,
and clergy. Next come the wealthier tradespeople and the other school
people. Marlton boasts half a dozen different schools to meet the
demands of people of widely differing ideas, Roman Catholic, Secondary,
Girls' Colleges, Board, Grammar and National Schools: the place is
overrun with educational establishments. There is consequently no
dearth of people, though the total population is certainly not more
than ten thousand.
My work is not very arduous and gives me time to write in my spare
hours. I only hope that I shall have the sense to avail myself of it.
I take mathematical sets all through the school: the boys seem to know
even less than they did at Radchester. Certainly they know no English.
I find to my intense disgust that I am and have been for the past ten
years suffering from chronic appendicitis. There is no need as yet for
an operation, but I have to be dieted very carefully and avoid games.
A much more insidious disease is attacking my brain. I am beginning
to get restive. I haven't the least idea why. I want to get up and
run away. It is all too comfortable. I am afraid of acquiescing and
becoming as my colleagues, happy as sheep are happy basking in the
sun. I never had this before: it's a new development. I go for miles
on my bicycle and sit on stiles or hedges and read or gaze out over
the landscape and wish--I scarcely know for what. I have lately been
rereading all Thomas Hardy's novels. I seem to be a sort of second Jude
the Obscure.
The hours are very different from those at Radchester. We have
breakfast at 8.30. Chapel (which we only have to attend once a day) is
at 9.15, and then school goes on from 9.30 to 12.45. At one o'clock
we lunch and Elspeth and I walk down to the town to shop or change
a library book at the station, getting back for tea at four. School
continues from 4.15 to 6. Then work is over for the day. There is no
preparation invigilation for masters, thank God. In the evening after
dinner I do a little correcting, not more than is necessary, write
if I feel like it, read a chapter or two of a novel, and so to bed at
ten. The days pass very quickly and I don't seem to do anything. I
am achieving nothing. Most of the day seems to be spent in riding to
and from school. I've been reading D. H. Lawrence's novel, "Sons and
Lovers." It's about as perfect a picture of Midland life as could well
be imagined. Thank Heaven that I'm back in a county among people who
hunt and talk the King's English. I have a great deal to be thankful
for. It seems a very Elysium of quiet content and happiness, and yet
there is underlying tragedy.
The first Monday in October is made an occasion for an annual orgie
which rouses the town out of sleep. I have just come from partaking
of all the fun of the fair. It starts on the Sunday night, when all
the riff-raff of the place march through the streets making a fearful
din with drums and kettles and tin cans and whistles, to celebrate
the completion of the building of the Priory. The day after is given
up to revelry of a rather gross kind. Booths are erected in the main
narrow street and all sorts of useless things are bought and sold. On
the fair ground there are roundabouts and swings, cinema shows and
helter-skelters, houp-las and side shows, rifle ranges and coco-nut
shies. It is all very tawdry and shallow and noisy and cheap, but it
gives one a glimpse of Hodge at play which is instructive.
Compared with the north-countryman he is feckless, very subservient,
slow and deliberate in his movements, content with his potato-patch
and fourteen shillings a week as wages, afraid of his superiors (the
north-countryman has no superiors) and in all things seems to be a
relic of the feudal system. He takes his pleasures very sadly and is
frequently drunk; he finds life monotonous but he is not ambitious
enough to cast off his slough; in Marlton he was born and in Marlton he
will be buried and that is his life history. There are as a consequence
a great number of workhouse inmates, semi-lunatic boys and girls who
loiter about the streets all day: the shops are very poor and the
attendants slow beyond belief. No one here seems to have any conception
of the value of time.
The boys at the school have the same lazy habits in a lesser degree:
they rarely run, they amble along through life very happily. They are
genial but by no means effusive. The lack of wild enthusiasms, frequent
riots, strenuous friendships and enmities is one of the glaring points
about Marlton when I come to compare it with Radchester. After a few
weeks Elspeth and I felt so bedraggled and worn out owing to the
enervating climate that we took a few half-holidays down by the sea.
What a joy it is to be working in so exquisite a country. The drive
over the downs, through the pine-woods, down to the rocky coast puts
fresh blood into one. I want to sing for the very joy of being able to
appreciate it. Nature is beginning to mean very much more to me than
she ever used to. I go up sometimes (when I am fretful and inclined to
chafe at the prison bars) to the golf-course, and then gaze over the
northern vale, and the Kentish Weald, the white cottages nestling under
the hills, the spires of many churches, and a great peace descends on
me. I begin to realize the meaning of that word "England" and all that
it connotes. If I hadn't been in the wilderness for four years I should
probably never have felt quite such a thrill of thankfulness at the
beauty of it. These south-country people as a rule take it all as a
matter of course: they have lived here always: they have never seen
Halifax or Huddersfield or Leeds or Radchester. They don't know the
ghastly depression that sinks into one's soul after a month of gloomy,
sunless days in a foggy, poisonous, manufacturing town.
One of the quaintest changes in my life is that now I find that I want
to write. I keep getting fresh ideas daily. At present I am engaged
in editing an "Anthology of Verse and Prose for Schools," which isn't
anything like so dull as it sounds.
_December 16, 1913_
I have had Tony down here for a few days. It was like entertaining a
hurricane. He says that I'm in danger of becoming as invertebrate as a
limpet. "Where are," he asked, "the wild diatribes against abuses, the
physical fitness, the madness about games, the frenzy for intellectual
improvement?" I shook my head sadly and murmured something about the
air. The boys he looked at in "break" one morning and snorted audibly
like a war-horse. "These lads have got the 'guts' of an Ague-cheek, the
blood of sardines," he said. "Why don't they get a move on? Do they
always slop about like this? You want the Radchester sergeant here for
a few days, some one to open their windpipes. What do you do all day?"
I told him. "I said '_do_,'" he replied.
Perhaps my appendicitis may have something to do with it, but certainly
it is a change to find myself confining myself to a slow walk into
the town with Elspeth in place of the seven miles' strenuous run or
the gory game of "Rugger" that usually occupied my afternoons. I go
out with the beagles a good deal, but for the first time in my life,
instead of trying to follow the hounds wherever they go, I sit on the
tops of gates and wait for them to come back and don't worry if I lose
them altogether. There is no fighting against the temptation to slack.
Elspeth has had a school-friend staying with her who infuriated me by
her vacuous behaviour. Her only aim in life is to attract men. I don't
know what is the matter with me, but married life is rubbing me up
the wrong way. I am becoming fidgety about my rights in the house. It
sounds childish: in fact it is childish. This settling down business is
going to be a lengthier job than I thought. I seem to have lost all my
old freedom of action or thought. I certainly love Elspeth no less in
my heart of hearts, but I hate being managed by a pack of women. First
there is the servant, then Elspeth, then Elspeth's school-friend. I
never seem to see a man. I can no longer have crowds of boys about me
and entertain them as I used to, because it's so expensive and we can't
afford it. Besides it makes so much extra work. But the real trouble
is, I fancy, that I love Elspeth far more than she loves me. I scent
the elements of a tragedy here already.
One custom here pleases me a good deal. All the senior boys have us
in turn to their studies to tea. They are much more men of the world
than the Radchester "bloods." Their airs and moustaches, their evident
wealth and perfect ease of manner all frighten me. I feel very much
more like a "fag" being patronized than a master.
I have already had two or three dire conflicts in Common Room over the
articles I have lately published. Several of my colleagues won't speak
to me: others say that I am trying to head a revolt against games and
all the age-old traditions that made Marlton famous: "whippersnapper"
is the phrase most commonly employed about me I think. I see myself
classed with Tipham of "The Lanchester Tradition." One of the greatest
pleasures I get in life is on alternate Saturday evenings, when I
attend the School Debating Society and let loose some of my "wild"
theories. These do not tend to make me more popular, but they certainly
rouse people to speak who normally would keep silence either through
nervousness or indifference.
My work I should like if only there were more of it. I get so little
to do that life hangs very heavily on my hands. I am become further
domesticated by the possession of a dog and a cat. We quarrel over
the animals. I loathe the cat: I hate all sleepy things and Elspeth
hates the dog in the house. Consequently I go off with "Sludge" (a
wild rough-haired terrier with no respect for anything in the world)
and tramp the country for miles and talk to him: he can understand my
frets and worries. He is very like me, never happy unless he is out and
about chasing something frenziedly. Elspeth stays at home and consoles
herself with the cat. It's a bad existence. Lately I have succumbed
to a new disease. I have an overmastering desire to hear the roar and
bustle of London: I believe if we lived there we should be happy, there
is such heaps to do.
Most husbands in the city only see their wives at night, in the early
morning and evening. Consequently they are glad to meet, whereas
Elspeth and I can see one another nearly every moment of the day. I am
in to all meals and invariably about the place when rooms are being
cleaned out, which seems to me to be happening all and every day. The
only way I have kept going is by keeping the house full of visitors,
mainly old Radcastrians, who come to see what sort of a married man I
make.
One curious incident that has just happened will give the clue to my
state of mind.