birth to a daughter this afternoon at half-past one. For months past I
have been trying to look after her in view of this great event, for
the last weeks I have myself been in a state of frenzy lest anything
should go wrong and I should lose her. To-day has been a ghastly
ordeal. I had to spend most of it in school, which was a good thing,
because it kept my mind from brooding. From nine to one I taught,
speaking all the time, trying my hardest to concentrate on quadratic
equations and Army English. I went up at lunch-time and was told to
disappear till four o'clock. I went for miles on my bicycle seeing
nothing, my mind a blank, except for one ever-recurring sentence: "O
God! grant that it may be all right." I couldn't face the thought of
her going under. Elspeth is the whole world to me. She has gradually
weaned me from my love of schoolmastering and now I think of nothing at
all but her. I went back at four and was told that everything was all
right and that I was the father of a daughter. I thought of nothing but
Elspeth's health and I was taken up to see her: she looked dreadfully
frail and ill. I forgot the baby: I didn't even want to see her until
I had seen Elspeth--then I was shown the wee morsel of humanity in its
cot. Its cry sounded to me quite uncanny. It seemed so hard to realize
that another life had entered the world since I was last in the house.
Every one at the school has been up to congratulate me: hundreds of
telegrams had to be dispatched, flowers and presents of all sorts began
to arrive. I begin to feel really important, but the fact that I am a
father will take a long time to realize. I had no idea how strung up
I had been all the term before: the presence of a nurse in the house
for the last week had worried me and kept me in a state of continual
torture. The courage of a girl having to face such an ordeal in cold
blood is positively wonderful. I only hope that she will quickly
recover.
_August 1, 1916_
It has been a fortnight of great trial. Elspeth was left very weak
and ill and is by no means well yet. She has had a very hard time.
The infant is as good as gold and amazingly healthy. She cries very
seldom. I had always imagined that children cried through the entire
night, but this kid never cries at all: she is one big smile by day and
contentedly sleepy at night. She is beautifully proportioned and has
large blue eyes and regular features. I had always thought men rather
fools who raved about their children's looks: all babies used to look
alike to me. Now I know that there never was such a baby as mine: I
look anxiously into "prams" along the road and compare the babies whom
I see there with mine. I have managed to hide my affection for her from
all the people who ask me silly questions. I'm not going to be classed
with all the other fathers there ever were as a blind worshipper of my
own child. Her hands and feet give me undiluted pleasure. It is amazing
to watch her moving them about: her suppleness ought to be a sign
of healthy activity in the future. Her head is small and splendidly
proportioned. I hope she does not grow up a fool. She gives Elspeth a
wonderful, never-ending interest in life: she thinks of nothing else.
It is the best thing that could possibly have happened to her: we
ought to have had a child at the very beginning. I am more proud of
her than I dare acknowledge to any one except myself. I should like to
write a book just jotting down her daily growth, her recognition of
her mother, of the nurse, of me, of strangers, of things in a room.
At present she loves looking at her hands and she keeps her thumb in
her mouth most of the day and night. She has an extraordinary amount
of individuality: unluckily, she is terribly frightened of any sudden
noise. This must be inherited. I hope to Heaven that she does not
inherit her father's dementia as well. At present she has got, I am
told, exactly the expression of my eyes, the far-away, detached look
varied by a piercing, questioning, quizzical gaze that so disconcerts
strangers. Elspeth's mother is extraordinarily attached to her and
would give her life for her: it is a joy to see the delight which the
infant takes in her grandmother and vice versa.
We have christened her Prunella after my mother. I had the luck to get
Tony down to the christening to be her godfather. Elspeth is going to
spend the first part of the holidays in Bath while I take Tony for a
walking tour in Devon and Cornwall during his convalescence. He has
been wounded in both arms. He, like everybody else, thinks her perfect.
I only hope that she will grow up loving us and finding us worthy of
her love. We must try to make life easier for her than it has been for
us.
_September 20, 1916_
Tony and I had a wonderful holiday together. Now that Elspeth has
Prunella and her mother she is happy and I, for some strange reason,
feel that I am leaving some part of myself behind with her in the
person of the kid, so I did not feel the separation so acutely as I
should otherwise have done.
I always return from a holiday in the West Country a different man.
On this occasion as the result Tony wrote some wonderfully descriptive
verses and three short stories, and I was inspired to begin my first
novel. I am not satisfied with it, because as usual I have hurried
through it far too quickly, my characterization is not sound, my
protagonists have simply run away with me. I start off by meaning to
say one thing and then end up by saying something quite different. I
cannot visualize scenes accurately: I give a hazy, vague impression
like a man who never keeps his eye on the object. I have often, for
instance, tried since I have been at Marlton to describe the school,
the Priory, or the town, but I have never succeeded in pleasing myself
with the result. The town to me is just a cluster of beautiful old
houses set in a picturesque valley flanked with wooded hills; the
Priory which stands in the midst defies description. I know that when
I get inside I gaze at the thin perpendicular pillars, the ornate
ceiling, the many coloured stained-glass windows, the slender beauty
of the whole, but I cannot get the impression it makes upon me into
words: the school is simply an Oxford College with lime-trees in the
quadrangle and latticed windows to its studies and no more. I can't
paint what it looks like on a clear moonlight night, or when the lights
shine through the rain on to the puddles in the main courts.... So it
is with Devon and Cornwall: their very names ring in my ears like some
magic phrase, but I can't explain the fascination these counties have
for me.
It is all rather a tragedy for me, for a man who cannot see or describe
accurately can scarcely expect to become a writer, and I am almost as
keen to bring out a great book as I am to be a great schoolmaster.
The tragedy lies even deeper, for I fail even in my calling. I want to
be able to plant my finger on abuses and rid the world of them, and
I find I am simply in my hurry destroying the wheat with the tares
and bringing the whole edifice of education about my ears with no
definite constructive theory about the rebuilding. I love boys but I
don't attract many but the outcasts. During the time that I have been
at Marlton I have only got to know at the outside a dozen intimately,
and I don't know that my influence on these has been wholly good. I
rouse in them a spirit of criticism and get them to refuse to believe
anything until they have proved it for themselves. I have made enemies
of practically all the staff, all of whom are better fellows than I
am and do more good with less effort. I seem to be the Martha of my
profession, cumbered about with too much serving, always thinking that
I am the only one who is really working because I kick up such a fuss
about it.
I seem to have been like this in everything that I have undertaken.
When I was married, I considered that I was the only man who had
ever had to learn by experience the laws that govern marriage, when
Prunella was born I imagined myself to be the only father in the world.
I suppose I do feel joys and miseries more acutely than most people.
The smallest kindness shown me makes me almost worship the doer of
it; the least hint of inimical criticism and I am up in arms in a
moment and consider myself the most badly treated man on the face of
the earth. It is awful to have to face oneself and write oneself down
as self-centred, narrow, anarchical, selfish, and all the rest of it.
At any rate those friends I have, have clung to me through thick and
thin, and Elspeth has been a brick to stick to me as she has. I made
her come up to town to see Tony before he went back to France and to
buy some new clothes. I am so proud of her these days that I want to
dress her smartly, give her none but the best things to wear, entertain
her to all the amusements that are going. She loves London; the shops
and restaurants and theatres all provide her with a never-failing
source of interest. Besides which it is necessary to have a fling in
the big world before we retire to our backwater at Marlton: it is all
very well for me, but there is nothing for her to do there but tend
Prunella.
_December 19, 1916_
This Christmas term has passed all too quickly. Elspeth has been
wrapped up in Prunella and watches her growth with ever-increasing
delight. I see the infant in the early morning and talk to her while I
am shaving: she is now cutting teeth and doing her level best to talk.
Her remarks at present consist of "Gug-gug-Da-da," and incomprehensible
noises pitched high and low in the scale: she laughs like a grown-up
person: she only cries when the piano is being played or the gramophone
put on. She lies and kicks in her cot, her pram or arm-chair by the
hour: she is quite contented crooning and laughing to herself. She
wriggles her hands and toes about incessantly and is as bad as any
animal about her bottle: her eyes dilate with fury if it is delayed,
and with pleasure when it appears. Her interest in everything that goes
on is positively comic: she is afraid of nothing except sudden noises
and allows herself to be handled by any stranger. All the masters'
wives love her: she must be really a beauty because every one is agreed
about it. I think her eyes are lovely and her contentment is a thing
to marvel at. The patience required for lying for months trying to
learn to talk, with teeth slowly coming, hair slowly growing, strength
gradually being built up, must be immense. Her intuition is perhaps the
most noticeable thing about her: she knows when she is being "ragged,"
she knows somehow exactly what it is that people are trying to convey
to her, and she answers any one's smile with a beautiful grin which
is entirely her own. She is, however, a complete deterrent to work.
I always want to be with her, to have her on my lap and pet her, but
I curb my desires strictly. After all, I've got my writing to attend
to, Sybil to teach, the boys' work to correct and games to referee. My
novel appeared in the autumn and to my intense surprise went into a
second edition almost at once: the critics were unanimous and loud in
their praise, which astonished me, for it seemed to me to lack any kind
of pretensions to style, clarity, cohesion, or even sense. None the
less the writing of books is not a paying game. An article brings in
quick returns, costs very little energy, and is not at all wearing to
the nervous system. After finishing my first book I was a wreck.
Spurred on by the success of this I have already written another
in imitation of the younger novelists of the day, in which I have
portrayed a horrible character obsessed by sex: I don't quite know
why: the writing of it affected me greatly and I am as limp as a rag
now it is done, and want to burn it, but my publisher is delighted
with it and wants to bring it out in the spring. For the sake of the
money I suppose I must let it go. Fortune seems to be smiling on me.
Another publisher has already made me sign contracts for two novels
and a volume of my collected poems, so I have my work cut out in the
near future to cope with the demand. Added to this, the best-known
literary agent in the country has now approached me and asked me to
let him place all my work. All the agents I have tried hitherto have
failed me hopelessly, but it is an honour to have Harrod for an agent,
I am told, so I have signed his agreement too. The only fly in the
ointment is that there is a great scarcity of paper and trouble in the
printing trade; still, people are reading books more than ever. I shall
never forget the day when I first saw a book of mine in the window of
a London book-shop. Fame (of a sort) I felt had at last reached me.
Three years ago I should never have dreamt such a thing possible, and
my little notoriety has already brought me great friends.
When the Christmas term is over we are to spend some days with quite a
number of leading literary lights, to whose conversation I am looking
forward. Common Room were incensed at my book because they thought that
they detected pictures of themselves. I can't for the life of me think
where, for the characters were all weaved entirely out of my own brain.
Apparently some of the opinions I put into the mouths of my worst
characters have been taken literally as my own, which is pernicious
nonsense. I should have thought after all this time that most people
here would know what ideals I stand for. As a matter of fact no one
has lately taken much trouble to cultivate the acquaintance either of
Elspeth or myself. They look on me as eccentric, they have not worried
to sympathize with me over my troubles and I am afraid that they
think that Elspeth does not want to know them because she goes out so
seldom. We live very much to ourselves. It is hard to see how we could
do otherwise when one realizes how we spend each day. I have to go on
writing most of the time to earn our daily bread: we haven't a penny
private means. We are not very economical, though we try hard to be so,
and prices are steadily rising.
I have had one bit of luck, however. I have been appointed Examiner for
the Oxford and Cambridge Locals in Mathematics and English, and though
the work entails a good deal of drudgery, it also makes an appreciable
difference to our income. Incidentally I very much like going through
English essay and literature questions. I like to compare all the
different methods of teaching English that obtain throughout the
country.
The term has passed without incident: Sybil has learnt a good deal
of history and written some excellent short stories. Boys come up to
borrow books and to discuss problems that worry them. I have had no
occasion to punish any boy for some time. Old Boys come back frequently
and keep us reminded that after all there is a war on, which we are apt
to forget when we have a petty feud of our own raging. I have refereed
a good deal of "footer," and struggled hard to keep my platoon up to
the mark. The only complaint I have about life is that the days are too
short and I want to do far more than I can.
_January 19, 1917_
We spent a splendid holiday in London going from house to house
of new friends and seeing for the first time how the artistic and
literary section of London live. They are very different from the
Marlton people: their codes are much less stringent, they are far more
tolerant, they seem to get much more out of life. They are intensely
interested in art, painting, sculpture, music, the drama, and all
æsthetic delights. Elspeth was taken up at once by them: she has the
sort of uncommon beauty that passes more or less without comment in
Marlton but in London is looked upon with admiration. She seems much
healthier and more vivacious in town: the life agrees with her. I
spent some days with her at Bath and some quietly in St. John's Wood,
writing for dear life at one of my new novels for Manson. The worst
of novel-writing is that it gives one no time at all for articles and
the money one derives from it does not come in for so long a time
after. I am told that the book writer achieves a kudos which the mere
short-story and article writer never gets. I doubt it, but it may be
so. Anyway I doubt whether I shall write many books, the wastage of
nervous tissue is too great. While I am at work on a subject I want to
go on and on at lightning speed until I have finished, and when I have
finished I am perilously near lunacy.
_February 10, 1917_
A frightful blow has befallen us. I have been turned out of Marlton
for writing my second novel. I am to leave at the end of the term. So
after eight years I am thrown out of my profession: a quaint finish
for the overkeen enthusiast. I quite see that I was a fool to write it.
It was all owing to my unreasonable haste. I spoke out too plainly: I
didn't condemn my villain enough or show the hatred I bear to vice. It
is useless to explain now: all the pent-up fury of those who imagine
themselves injured by me has broken out and I am overwhelmed. I was
supposed to be taking part in a play that the school and town were
getting up in aid of the hospital and I was requested to resign my part
because no one would act in it if I persisted in going on. I have been
lectured by heaps of my junior colleagues here as if I had committed
a most heinous crime. I don't quite know what to make of it all. That
the book is a bad one I can scarcely doubt, for the critics have been
as unanimous in their condemnation of it as they were unanimous in
praising my first. I must be much madder than I thought I was, because
I still fail to see why my influence, which was generally allowed to
be on the side of the angels, should suddenly become malign and foul
because I create foul characters in a book.
I could wish that some of my enemies could have seen my further work,
for I have now two more novels written, which can scarcely appear
for a year at least. It is all horrible. I can't bear to contemplate
cutting myself off from the society of boys. Before I married they
meant everything in the world to me and now they come after Elspeth and
Prunella.
I have passed through troublous years of late which have tainted my
brain: I might have become sane again in time, but now all is darkness
and I have nothing further to look forward to. Each hour of class
brings me nearer to my last one and it is all I can do to keep from
crying aloud. At least I will spend my remaining days in trying to
keep the beacon bright in my boys' eyes. I have always regarded the
schoolmaster's as the most responsible position in the kingdom: these
boys sitting under me to-day will help to control the Empire to-morrow.
Am I leading them to see that corruption, vice, intolerance and bigotry
are deadly sins and that disinterestedness, virtue, tolerance and
active sympathy are the weapons they must learn to use in their fight
to build the New Jerusalem in England? I have to rouse them from their
lethargy, to make them wild crusaders, caring for nothing but the
future prosperity of their country. I have so little time left to do it
and so much to do. The days pass with frightful rapidity. Elspeth has
been up to London searching for a flat for us to live in, and after an
arduous and protracted journeying she has eventually discovered a small
but comfortable ground-floor apartment in Maida Vale.
So now nothing remains but to finish the term out, pack up and go. I
have been searching for work but there does not seem anything vacant
just at present. It is no light thing at my age suddenly to throw up
the profession one has adopted and to begin again. Education was my
one great passion in life. I can never hope to be a great writer. The
future is black: I dare not contemplate it. There are still, however,
thank God, some weeks to go.
_April 3, 1917_
My last term as a Public School master is over. How I managed to get
through the last few hours in school without breaking down I don't
know. Luckily no one knows the agony I feel. Several, the majority of
people, think that I am leaving of my own free will in order to be at
liberty to write: the irony of that is laughable. I would give my whole
soul to continue to my life's end as a teacher of youth: I have loved
my work with a passion I could never transfer to anything else. I have
made endless mistakes. I have gone too fast: I have treated growing
boys as if they were grown up: I have not always given my colleagues
their due in my intolerance of lukewarmness. I have always worshipped
energy, and energy has been my ruin. I have never been able to curb my
tongue or my enthusiasm nor to stifle my opinion. The grass has grown
over the grave of my ambitions at Radchester and I am by now forgotten
as a breath of wind that once passed over, so will it be at Marlton
in a term or so. All my ardour gone for nothing, my strenuous ideals
broken, my office another man will take and Marlton will be at peace
again.
Regrets I know to be vain, tears wasteful. The decree has gone forth
against me and I must abide by it.
But after all, "There is a world elsewhere!" Marlton is somewhat of
a backwater, the waters here run very sluggishly. I want more scope;
once I am in the great world again I shall quickly recover my sense
of perspective and come to regard this place in its true light. My
four years' experience here has been most valuable, but the secret of
success in life is to keep moving. A rolling stone may gather no moss,
but it does "see life." At any rate I am saved from sinking into a
groove. To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.
The meaning of life, as Tchekov says, is to be found only in one
thing--fighting. To get one's heel on the vile head of the serpent and
to crush it.... If one has made a mistake and lost faith in one idea,
one may find another.
I have still got what I would not barter for anything in heaven or
earth, and that is the love of Elspeth.
So long as she remains mine I can defy the world, I am happy. Pray God
she will never desert me and turn me out as Marlton has, for without
her I have no sun, no moon, no reason for being. She possesses me heart
and soul. I only wish she could ever realize a millionth part of what
she means to me.
APPENDIX
_I have thought it good, for the sake of those who have somehow missed
Patrick Traherne's published work, which he produced under a variety
of pseudonyms and initials (G. K., J. B., A. C. B., and K. R., being
his favourites), to append a fragment here of a book which he never
finished._
_It was to be called "The Future of the Boy," but I have been unable
to find more than the Prologue and Epilogue: he wrote to me on several
occasions asking advice on technical points, and I had gathered from
these letters that he was well under way with the book (which was
obviously to be his "magnum opus") when all writing had to cease.
I fear that he must have destroyed the manuscript in a moment of
depression, probably on the day when he received his dismissal from
Marlton. I guess, however, that he could not bring himself to burn
his Prologue and Epilogue even though he became too inert to try to
publish them. I am the more pleased, therefore, to be allowed the
privilege of giving publicity for the first time to two of the most
remarkable papers on education I have ever read. That they are immature
and in many respects false is at once obvious; they only touch, too,
on the intellectual side of school life, the importance of which he
always overemphasized; but they are stimulating, controversial, and
interesting._
_I shall be amply repaid if the result of my labours is to send
such readers back to his earlier work, where they may discover
for themselves some of the myriad problems that vex the practical
educationalist, and at the same time learn more of his theories for
reforming the abuses which block up the path to progress._
PROLOGUE
_Why do not English boys care for learning?_
LORD BRYCE (January 3, 1914).
MODERN SHELL: TO-DAY
The boy's first intimation that a new day of miserable waste has
begun is received by the clanging in his ears of a discordant bell by
a man servant, whose sole claim to attention in these pages is that
he also acts as the senior boys' bookmaker's agent, and supplier of
cigarettes, tobacco, matches and pipes at a rate highly profitable to
himself. The compulsory bath over (no boy would wash unless he was
compelled, that is an idea that you who live on adages and saws which
are one tissue of lies will find it hard to believe, but it is true),
after the compulsory bath, I say, he hurries into his clothes, dashes
downstairs and just gets to the chapel as the doors close behind him.
The service need not be given in detail: it is merely a roll-call with
a little music thrown in; the boys are ardently urged to join in the
responses or psalms, sometimes with threats, but except on Sundays no
part whatever is taken by the congregation in the service. They mark
with satisfaction that their form master has noted their presence and
then proceed with their disturbed slumbers, unless the youth on their
right or left has some racy story or spicy bit of news to impart, or
there is some friend across the gangway of the aisle at whom they wish
to gaze, not being permitted by law to speak owing to disparity of
age. The fascination of the loved face grows and the service becomes
interesting until the Head Master's eye, ever roving, searching for
evil, lights on these two: they blush, hide their faces under a
pretence of praying, and march out; the service is over. A scamper
ensues towards the classrooms for the most hated and slackest school of
the day: that on an empty stomach before breakfast.
The scene is an ill-lighted, cobweb-ridden, white-wash-walled,
low-ceilinged room, fitted with old oak desks, on which are carved many
thousands of initials and into which several obscene remarks are deeply
inked; long low benches without backs incite the boys to lounge forward
with bent shoulders; there is no relief on any of the walls to hide the
hideous plaster except a map of Palestine dated 1871.
The blackboard is rough and cracked, and whatever writing is inscribed
on it is indiscernible when the lights are on.