former should supplant the latter. I want fair dealing. At present
there is no fair dealing. Consequently some of the brighter spirits
have produced magazines of their own, satirical, comic, serious,
any and every sort as a counterblast to the school magazine. These
illegitimate productions have a short life but a quite merry one. They
create endless diversion owing to the fact that the satire is too
carefully veiled for any but the very few to understand it; people
are set guessing as to the possible authors, and there is always a
rumour that the paper is about to be suppressed. They show a spark of
humour, whereas the legitimate magazine is always deadly serious: when
it aims at humour, as in its correspondence, it only succeeds in being
ineffably tedious and dull.
_September 20, 1915_
We had a wonderful holiday in Scotland. We went via Edinburgh to
Kingussie, which is in Strathspey, in full view of the Cairngorms; the
scenery between Blair Atholl and Kingussie is magnificently rugged
and grand. Kingussie itself is a fair-sized village of white-washed
houses with two quite excellent hotels, both under the same management.
We chose the cheaper and had the luck to have the run of the other.
From the very first we made friends. By a strange chance two of the
cheeriest and most typical of the best sort of Marltonians happened to
be up there and we went for many excursions together, bathing in lochs
and burns and climbing cairns.
Acting on my specialist's advice I began to take up golf and became
immediately seized with a mania. Before we left I was playing
thirty-six holes a day. The golf-course at Kingussie is right up the
mountainside and is truly hazardous and sporting. There were crowds of
visitors, all of them as merry as could be. Except for a few men in
kilts and trains full of sailors passing through, one would never have
believed that we were a nation at war. Every sort of person came and
stayed at our hotel during the eight weeks that we were there, from Mr.
Asquith and Mr. McKenna to the most astoundingly vulgar shopkeepers
from Dundee and Glasgow. The wonderful fresh air soon brought colour to
Elspeth's cheeks and she began to take exercise and climb some of the
peaks near by with me: she also bathed with me in the Spey and sat and
painted the blue hills while I wrote.
We made friends with the English chaplain and his wife, with the hotel
proprietor who had amassed a wonderful collection of curios, with a
peerless Marlborough boy whom I am never likely to forget, with a few
convalescent officers and most of the residents. Never a day passed
that was not full of enjoyment. The weeks passed all too quickly but
I rapidly grew better and my nerves became quieter and my outlook on
life less turbulent and queer. I owe my cure mainly to golf, which kept
my thoughts off writing or the war.
I have had articles in most of the important reviews and in several of
the weeklies. I find that I am being hailed as an educational expert
and a literary critic, whereas in reality I am neither. I am a poor,
rather demented creature with very high ideals and in my anxiety to see
some of my ideas carried out I offend many good men, put myself into
a false position and ruin myself in other people's estimation. I am
over-enthusiastic. If I could only learn to go more slowly. It is the
same old story about my mathematical teaching. I can't understand why
a boy should not acquire the rudiments of mathematics quickly. I know
that he could if he would only bestir himself. So if only the schools
as a whole would bestir themselves, we should get boys interested in
something more important than games. I go the wrong way to work. I
haven't got the tact of a flea. As my first publisher said when I sent
him the draft of my first novel, "This is too damned honest." That has
been my failure through life. Instead of turning things over in my mind
I just blurt out what I am thinking at the moment and get angry because
every one doesn't straightway agree.
Elspeth and I spent a few days at Nairn in order to taste the sea
breezes and I played golf with a Cambridge billiard Blue, who has now
a post in the British Museum. Nairn is full of interesting people,
but it is a strange anomaly of a place. In parts it is as hideous
as Radchester, in others, as in the view across to Cromarty, it is
exquisitely beautiful: the colours are soft and of every hue. I found
this part of Scotland interesting from a literary point of view. There
is certainly a touch of _Macbeth_ in Forres: and "Ossian" could only
have been written by a man who knew Kingussie. I hope before I die that
we shall once again have the chance to see Loch Laggan: I have never
been more taken with a piece of scenery in my life. Laggan is like a
miniature sea, set in between two beautifully shaped hills, ideally
quiet, perfect for bathing and for rambling about on the moors. But it
is too far out of the world for a man situated as I am now, who cannot
bear to be out of touch with the latest movements. Laggan would be
the place to go to worry out some new philosophy or to compose some
wonderful new piece of music. I think I could write a novel there. But
there must be no rumours of wars over the other side of the hill. In
these days the heart pines for London and friends: it sounds ungrateful
to say this, for Scotland did a great deal for me, and Elspeth and I
both benefited enormously from our stay and were loath to go.
_December 31, 1915_
We determined to take in a paying guest this term: our Scottish tour
cost us £100. Luckily we got an exceedingly interesting man, just
down from Oxford, who has come here to take temporary work. He is a
great historian and exceedingly keen on political economy. He began
by being badly "ragged" by the boys and detested by his colleagues
because of his rather new ideas and revolutionary principles: I came
to like him very much. He entertained Elspeth and me a good deal. When
he first arrived he was deadly serious, but we soon laughed him into a
more equable state of mind: unfortunately for us he was conscripted
although he was nearly blind, and so he had to go.
I have three times been up to the War Office to try to get out to the
Front, but it is no good thinking of it till I am sane again. The last
War Office official whom I saw sent me to the greatest brain specialist
in London, and I now go up every week to be quietened down. He won't
let me write more than is essential for my well-being, he tries to
put me into an easy state of mind where I cease from troubling about
anything. The idea is to get the nervous tissues to work evenly, not
to get frayed and harassed by the millions of perplexing doubts and
obsessions which flit across my mind. I am doing my best to act on his
advice. It is all a question of whether my will is strong enough to
impose a brake upon my mind, which is always showing signs of breaking
loose from the necessary restraint that sanity demands. He tells me to
enjoy life, not to take myself so seriously, to let things slide and
adjust themselves.
In my frenzy to get things done, I overreach myself. I attack the
deadly dullness of the countryside, I attack the abuses in a school
curriculum. I even oppose the current morality of the age and instead
of doing good I do active harm. I don't stop to think how my opinions
will be construed.
I wish some of those who look on me as a dangerous innovator could
see me in form. I am sure that no one could take exception to my
statements there. My whole gospel is all of a piece. "Lukewarmness" is
the unforgivable sin: one must be an active agent and ally oneself on
the side of God or mammon. There is no halting between two opinions:
if we accept (as we must) one or the other so must we fight for that
side tooth and nail. The Holy Ghost, the Divine Spark, conscience, call
it what you will that inspires men on to courageous, unselfish, heroic
acts and thoughts, dies unless it is nurtured and carefully looked
after. That is the lesson I impress on my boys in all the lessons where
I get a chance of talking. On Sunday and Monday mornings I comment on
all the books I have read during the week, drawing some lesson of life
for their guidance. He only is the true teacher who is not afraid to
teach, to explain the difficulties of life, his own shortcomings and
attempts to find the light. One must be honest to deal fairly with boys.
I spend my time now in bicycling down to school after breakfast,
teaching all the morning, writing articles all the afternoon with an
occasional variant by walking down to the town with Elspeth, teaching
from 4.15 to 6, and then coming home and writing until 10 and so to
bed. In this way the days slip past at incredible speed. We seem to
be in another world from the war: our only reminders are gigantic
catastrophes, big successes, old boys returning scarred and maimed;
telephonic communications plastered in the local bookseller's window,
wounded soldiers, Belgian refugees, and occasional lectures. Common
Room conversation has changed. The talk now during "break" is nearly
always on the news of the day and very gloomy are the predictions
made, especially by our older men, who are very hard hit by the horror
of it and age perceptibly between one term and another. The debating
societies flourish as they never did before, boys seem to be working
harder, games are relegated to a secondary place in the estimation of
the school and we seem to have settled down with grim determination to
see it through.
I have lately been lecturing to the Girls' School and in London on
Rupert Brooke. He is a poet exactly after my own heart. He is clever,
witty, honest, and tries to find a meaning in life. He strains after
Beauty but is not afraid of Ugliness: he is in love with the material,
the tangible joys of life, but is not afraid of probing into the unseen
world and guessing at what lies behind the darkness.
I have had the great good fortune to have two books published this
autumn, one a school textbook, the other a series of sketches of
English country life reprinted from the magazines. The sense of
authorship gives me tremendous pleasure and the letters I get of
adverse and commendatory criticism do me good. I would rather write a
real book that mattered, something to inspire and cheer people up and
show them a path through the labyrinth of life than anything else in
the world. Pray God I may live long enough to do that.
The days of quarrels and struggles for supremacy between Elspeth and
myself are over. She is extraordinarily patient with me and I do my
level best not to give her cause for offence. When either of us shows
signs of a relapse, the other immediately climbs down and gives in at
once. I am as happy as it is possible for man to be. Some half-dozen
boys come up to my house regularly and talk "bookish shop" and show up
literary compositions of wonderful insight and value. I am making more
and more friends in the school.
Coningsby is perhaps my closest friend: he is the Tony of Marlton:
he chafes at the routine and rules and finds an avenue of escape in
literature: he is also a born poet. He has a true sense of beauty and
is learning to discipline himself by imitating the metres of all the
older poets. I am trying to teach him the necessity of discipline,
reticence and restraint in writing as in life, but I find it very hard
owing to my own inability to conform in one or the other.
I take him with me to the University Extension Lectures on the modern
poets and to the frequent concerts given in the town by Plunket Greene,
Gervase Elwes, the London String Quartette, the Westminster Glee
Singers and other celebrities that come down here.
One thing which has brought out the latent talent and interesting side
of a number of boys has been a performance of _Twelfth Night_, which
one of the House-masters got up in aid of charity. Boys love acting
and to meet them day after day at rehearsals brought us all into much
closer contact than we were before.
Boys think far more deeply than they used to. They grow much more
quickly to maturity than they were wont. In one way one misses the
careless irresponsibility: it kept one eternally young to be always
with youth, but now, partly owing to the fact that all the senior boys
work in the holidays in munition factories or on farms, the whole
school is much more "grown up" in spite of the fact that the average
age is much lower.
_January 17, 1916_
Elspeth and I spent Christmas in Bath and I tried to write without much
success, so we decided to go to Bournemouth, where we stayed for three
weeks and enjoyed every minute of it. By a strange chance we met at
least half a dozen people who were with us in Scotland in the summer.
We walked about the cliffs trying to get strong and went to many
entertainments and read a great many novels. We joined in at nights
with the hotel people in their amusements, which did us both good and
went a long way to remove the depression of the times.
I still go up to London every week to see my specialist. I am gradually
getting quieter, though there are moments when my restlessness drives
me to do crazy things. There are hardly any old Radcastrians of my time
left. Two masters are back maimed for life, one armless, and the other
without a right leg. The other young ones are all killed. Stapleton has
given up his living and is working on a farm: Montague and Jimmy Haye
keep on coming and going from and to France. Both have been wounded
once, but they seem to bear charmed lives. They always spent some part
of their leave with us at Marlton. They live for getting somewhere
where it is really quiet and there is no reminder of the war.
_April 3, 1916_
It is strange to walk through the streets of Marlton and hear
working-men talking of Salonika, Gallipoli, Mesopotamia, and India in
the most casual way as if they were all villages within easy walking
distances. The postmen, porters, and farm labourers are beginning to
come back, having been invalided out of the services. All of them are
full of wonderful exploits and make us poor stay-at-homes feel out of
it and useless. The term has passed quietly. I have been told by the
Head Master that my writings do not altogether please my colleagues,
that I do not temper my enthusiasm with sufficient discretion or think
long enough before I commit myself to a judgment. I have been too much
obsessed with my theory that the intellectual and æsthetic faculties
should be cultivated before the others to see the dangerous side of my
tenets. I hate upsetting the masters here because some of them have
been very long-suffering with my madness. I am certainly extremely
unpopular because, like Feste, "I am comptible, even to the least
sinister usage." Under my mask I am abnormally sensitive. I hate making
enemies. I want to be every man's friend. I almost deceive myself into
thinking that I am, then in an unguarded moment I flaunt an opinion
which disgusts the conventional; in my horror of ignorance and dullness
I make sweeping generalizations about people who live in the country
and I somewhat naturally have the whole hive about my ears. Who am I,
forsooth, to talk of ignorance and dullness? Why should I set myself
up as a pinnacle of light? I don't: it's just because I am striving so
hard to escape from the slough that I seek to drag out others with me,
a foolish, quixotic act.
Elspeth and I have been amusing ourselves looking at all the vacant
houses in the town to find somewhere larger: it is rather a good game
going over other people's houses and comparing them with one's own.
We had a fortnight of deep snow and spent the time in tobogganing,
which took me right back to boyhood's days. For that fortnight I
was quite easy in my mind and irresponsible again, forgetful of the
myriad worries that beset me. We find it very hard to keep going. I
get agonies of apprehension just before each post comes in, wondering
what manuscripts are going to be returned, hoping against hope that
at last something will be accepted. If only I could get a series
commissioned, I should be happy. It's a fiendish business thinking out
subjects to amuse people, only to be turned down by one editor after
another. I spend a small fortune in stamps alone. All the same I ought
not to grumble: I make on an average about £100 a year by writing.
When editors do pay, they pay handsomely, quite out of proportion to
the trouble of writing the one article that finds acceptance. What
stupefies me is the enormous drawer full of writings all sent back too
often to submit again, or else topical and hence dead. I find that I
can't write on the war. I want to be definitely literary or definitely
educational. My colleagues dislike my doing the latter, and there is
very little market for the former.
XVIII
_May 4, 1916_
We spent the Easter holidays near a munitions works in Essex and had
our first taste of Zeppelins. I was acting in some amateur theatricals
to amuse the workers in the factories, and while we were driving home
afterwards immediately above us sailed gracefully along the grey
cigar-shaped beautiful engine of destruction. The noise of the bursting
shells and the bombs she dropped was terrific: but none of the people
who live here seemed to worry at all. I was frightened considerably,
but there was nothing to be done except go to bed, so we did. I don't
care about seeing any more Zeppelins: it would take a considerable time
for me to take them all as part of the day's work. I went over the
factories and saw the whole business, from danger buildings to the most
elementary innocuous part of the concern. It is a colossal undertaking
and one that gives a man some slight inkling of the gigantic conflict
in which we are engaged. The workers seemed all very cheery and were of
all types, from parsons to bricklayers, domestic servants to duchesses.
We were staying with some extremely pleasant people. The daughter of
the house, Sybil Grant, is to live with us for a term because she
is unhappy at school. Her mother likes my system of education: the
household is one of the best I have ever stayed in. They are all
interested in modern movements, in poetry, science, ethics, everything
pertaining to the intellect, and at the same time they are athletic.
Like the people in "Mr. Britling" they play strenuous and humorous
games of hockey every Sunday afternoon, recruiting from local Belgian
refugees, service men at home on leave, nurses, and all the local
girls for their sides. I have rarely enjoyed a holiday more. Yet even
here the bad side of my character came out at times. I grew restless
and morose some days and dashed off to London for no purpose except
that I wanted to keep moving. The suburbs of London on the north-east
side depress me frightfully. Coming back from Liverpool Street through
Hackney Downs and Enfield is like going through the Inferno.
_June 25, 1916_
It is rather jolly having Sybil Grant in the house: she gives me a
special human interest. It is the first time I have come into contact
with an absolutely "slack" person. She disliked school because she
could not get on with her work. I don't wonder. She is incapable of
tackling any subject unless she loves it. She reads a great deal of
poetry and likes writing it. But her art is quite formless. Like the
boy Coningsby she always writes of sea-gulls and desolate cliffs. All
her topics are as morbid as youthful topics always are: she delights in
death-bed scenes and lonely suicides, deserted lovers, and murderers.
In her way she is something of a mystic. She rather thinks that she
is gifted with "second sight," which spoils her a good deal, because
it leads her to imagine herself as a sort of divine prophetess. She
makes many friends among the boys, which is good both for them and for
herself.
I spend most of my time in being exceedingly rude to her and putting
her down to work out mathematical problems, which she loathes. In spite
of this, however, we understand one another pretty well and get on
admirably. We have to-day had a great lunch at the Castle Hotel, two
Sixth Form boys and two young but thoroughly intellectual masters. For
two hours we sat and discussed educational ideals. Maltby is all for
the many being sacrificed to the few: brains alone matter: he would
have all games "bloods" disregarded entirely unless they were in the
Sixth, but all members of the top forms privileged in every possible
sort of way in order to act as an incentive to others to emulate them;
intellectual and not athletic prowess is his creed, and of course
I agree to a large extent. Our object is to show boys that nothing
matters in comparison with the growth of the brain, that hard work
leads to competence, honour, and a full understanding of life, and
that nothing but hard work will bring out the best and most laudable
faculties in man. In order to achieve this we should have to destroy
the whole existing system, for the love of beef and muscle is at
present ingrained in boys from their earliest years and hero-worship
is apparently as rampant as ever it was. In my own small way I always
try to instil into my boys the necessity to open and use all the
brain-cells instead of just ten or twenty per cent, of them, but my
influence alone doesn't count for much. We try to teach the lesson that
games are only a recreation and not the serious business of life. I
believe the attitude which boys adopt towards the Corps is the right
one. They work hard enough at the book work, they try to become as
efficient as possible on parade, but they revel in field-days. We have
had two splendid ones this term. One day last week we marched down to
Welham Heights and fought a great fight across the heather against
heavy odds. It is a wonderful place. It was a very clear day and in
the intervals of fighting we got a chance of taking in the beauties
that lay before us, the winding valleys, the furze-clad downs, the
distant white cliffs and the green of the open sea. Few of those who
took part in this manœuvre will quickly forget the impression which
this superb view of Sussex made on their minds. Such a day fills us
all with renewed energies for our work: we fill our lungs with fresh
air and our minds with fresh and invigorating thoughts: we go back to
work revivified and full of determination. Incidentally we seem to get
to know each other better. On the way home in the train we discuss all
sorts of subjects nearest to our hearts, which we do not normally give
voice to.
We have very much more chastened Speech Days in war time than
we used to have. There is no cricket match, no prize-giving, no
luncheon, only the Priory service is retained and to that is added
the ever-lengthening list of Old Boys who have given their lives for
England.
_July 12, 1916_