Part 12

We had a really gay time for two days. The bridesmaids had the time of their lives. I wonder that the Head didn't put up a list of rules about them but it was all over before he really discovered anything about it. It was a sight for the gods to see members of Common Room raking up old frock-coats and top hats and white waistcoats for the occasion. The ceremony made me very jealous and I went back to my rooms feeling terribly lonely. Sometimes it seems to me that a man is only half a man until he marries. It would be splendid to have some one to turn to in every mood, some one who would sympathize and always be there ready to console, comfort, and share your joys and griefs. Ah! But who is that some one to be, that perhaps not impossible She?

_July 29, 1912_

This has been a wonderful summer term from the point of view of weather. All our school matches came off, all our field-days passed without a hitch. The summer term makes an enormous difference to life here. Then the sea at last seems to take on some sort of colour, the country seems less drab, people are more cheerful and human: the long evenings on the shore are a pure joy--and then of course there are the early morning bathes, the lazy afternoons watching the cricket, or reading or trying to concoct an article. Every one seems to be in the best of health, there are fewer rows, and we are less antagonistic in Common Room.

We have started an illegitimate "rag" called the _Radchester Ram_, which gives me unalloyed pleasure. We got tired of the everlasting succession of accounts of matches in the _Radcastrian_, and so we have collected all the really original literary stuff we could get and now we bring this new periodical out once a month. There is nothing offensive in it, as there so often is in magazines of this sort. It is simply a medley of verse and sketches, short stories and articles of general interest. On our first number we made about a sovereign profit. It gives many of us something to think about and encourages boys to write. We pay for all the contributions we use.

We have had two wonderful addresses given us here, one on Speech Day by Lord Dunnithorne, in which he implored the boys to keep up their ardour and energy not only in games, but in every side of life, in keeping an eye while still at school on public affairs, and developing a sense of proportion as to the relative values of the spiritual and the material, the other by a Fellow of All Souls from the pulpit on the hypocrisy that is so rampant in Public Schools. He asked us to think for ourselves, to set ourselves against any tradition, however strong, when and if we felt clear that it was against the principles of Christ and Liberty. He dwelt not on the greatness of the Public Schools, but their failure to produce the big men of the day. He brought out name after name of men who are now leading the world in politics, in science, in religion, in every department of life who owed nothing to the Public Schools. He accounted for this by telling us that we always tried to level up the many and so levelled down the few who really mattered, that our general level was far too low and meant a crushing of that Divine spark which alone could help us to do our duty. It was like a breath of inspiration from another world to hear this fine exponent of the best Oxford spirit trying to rouse us to a sense of our shortcomings. The Head was furious about the sermon, as were quite half the members of Common Room. I made it the text of pretty well all my discourses for the rest of term. Most of the boys of course didn't know what he was driving at; those who did were divided into two great camps: the upholders of tradition and those who agreed with him. I am afraid we who agreed with him were in a minority. Montague and Jimmy Haye refused to speak to me for weeks. Poor devils. Probably before very long they will come to understand what the preacher meant and metaphorically sit in sackcloth and ashes because they heeded not his warning. How the old men hate individuality: they fear it as Shakespeare feared and hated the mob.

Individuality, like originality, is dangerous to custom: when people begin to think for themselves there is usually trouble somewhere, but unless people learn to think for themselves they will surround themselves with unimaginable horrors. How often in the train does one come across half-educated louts gesticulating and laying down the law on every conceivable point, their arguments, theories and principles all emanating from the halfpenny press. More harm has been done to the cause of progress and good sense in this country by cheap journalism than by any other agency. It is not drink, but the gutter press that gnaws at the very vitals of the commonwealth. It is an appalling thing to think that as a nation we prefer to take all our theories and principles at second hand from the sayings of unscrupulous ink-slingers of Grub Street who have never done an honest day's work in their lives, but have just earned their daily bread by obeying the dictates of some foul capitalist who thinks of nothing but filling his own pockets. Politics may be dirty, but there is nothing quite so foul in this country as journalism. Unless we can make boys rise above the pinchbeck claptrap of the cheaper writers we fail entirely to educate them. To pin one's faith to anything but one's own intellect is to fail to make anything of life. I've tried every means in my power of late to rouse my boys to take an interest in their work, to show them the continuity of history, the reason why we read good literature, the reason for exercising the faculties: we must send them out into the world with the critical spirit fully developed, not ready to be gulled by every shibboleth of party politics or mad cry in the market-place of people with axes to grind. We want them to mould other people's opinions, not to take everything ready made--as a sort of reach-me-down suit that they can wear without question. I want them to probe all difficulties and not to rest until they have planted the new Jerusalem in this green and pleasant land of England.

Of all missionary work, this is the most important, to get people to think for themselves, not to have minds like the rows of suburban villas in which they live, each one an exact replica of its neighbour's; dull, correct, unambitious, cramped and futile, but to launch out in experiments, to probe for some underlying purpose in life, to keep on searching for some Holy Grail, to work for the amelioration of mankind and the progress of humanity, not to sit down quietly under abuses but sword in hand to set out to destroy the powers of evil. One gets easily worked up to preach the gospel of the nobility of work to boys: the hard part of the task is to rouse them from the appalling apathy and listlessness which characterize them. They are used to being shouted at and preached to--they don't take the trouble to listen to one quarter of what one says. They can understand punishment, but they have very little use for a mere appeal to their better nature, their reason or their emotion.

Every night at 6.30 I have a voluntary class for Shakespeare lovers. We run through play after play, and those who come on the whole gain a great deal. The difficulty is to get them to come. The great majority of them prefer to go over to the gym. or to laze about in their studies. They don't realize at all that I have to eat my dinner in five instead of thirty minutes in order to give them this time. They look on me as a sort of Shakespeare fanatic and come only when there is nothing else to do. They have no idea that Shakespeare has something very definite to say to them, some principle of life to disclose for their benefit, if only they will do their part. They all think that there is some royal road to learning by which all virtue can be achieved without ardour, energy or suffering. If they could only hear the complaints of Old Boys who come back and discuss over the fireside their wasted opportunities it would do them a world of good. I try every means I can think of to interest my forms. I lecture on a century of English literature and get each boy to select a subject and make it his own by reading up and writing a paper on his favourite author in that century. These papers are read aloud before the rest of the form, who comment favourably or adversely, and debates are held to try the opinion of the House on the different verdicts formed by each member of the class.

I find my system of entertaining boys to tea a very expensive one. I gave a large party to my form _en bloc_ at the end of term: it cost me £2 10s. I shouldn't mind if I were earning a living wage, but £40 a year out of my £150 is docked for a pension scheme in which I take no interest, and Oxford bills still come in and I can never meet them. The holidays, too, eat such a hole into one's salary. I am always "broke" and always in debt. I wish I could learn to save. Some men seem to have put by quite a lot for the inevitable rainy day. I have had one good excursion lately. Our team won the Rapid Firing Competition at Bisley and I was sent down with the team to claim the cast of the Winged Victory which it is our good fortune to have won. I have never seen a more motley crew than the different competitors who went up for prizes.

Tony has got into the Shooting VIII, so I had him with me during this tour, which gave me tremendous joy. I managed to read Edith Wharton's wonderful romance of "Ethan Frome" in the train on the way down and "The Innocence of Father Brown" coming back. I have read the latter book to my form since. They simply gloat over it. It makes admirable material for reproduction: another good idea is to read half of one of the stories and make them finish it in their own words--a sort of Edwin Drood idea. Thank God this term is over: the tiredness of my brain can be guessed by the virulent language of my reports. I had to write several of them over again because the Head objected to my candour.

XI

_August 12, 1912_

Camp at Tidworth was a splendid holiday. Of course the Plain is not 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.