October 13, 1911

Back again at Radchester. As usual there are a few rows on. Two of the parson members of the staff are quarrelling because Tomson (the High Church one) will call the Communion "Eucharist," and will talk about the "Catholic" instead of the Protestant Church. Mathews on the other hand calls the altar the communion-table. A battle royal is in progress. I believe Tomson will have to go. This is a very Low Church school and any one who crosses himself or indulges in any ritualistic practices is looked upon as inclined to papistry.

It seems a strange thing to make such a fuss about. Both Mathews and Tomson are good, conscientious workers, and the school will be the poorer if either of them leaves. Another row concerns me. It is commonly thought by some members of my form that Chichester has been "sneaking" to me about their methods of work, a pretty laughable idea when one thinks how little Chichester cares about any one in the school, much less in his form. We never talk about school matters at all. We talk books and philosophy. Anyway, I have lately been boycotted by my form, by Montague and Haye and most of the school.

I'm reading Stevenson's and Meredith's Letters. I've got rather a passion for letter-writers. The Paston Letters, Dorothy Osborne's, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's, Horace Walpole's, Gray's, Lamb's and Cowper's all gave me lasting pleasure. One feels at last as if one really was beginning to see the inner workings of the minds of great geniuses when you close a volume of their intimate correspondence—but I prefer Stevenson's and Meredith's to all the others. They show such wonderful cheeriness in the face of adversity, such love for their friends and wives, such an interest in literature and in life. They are so splendidly natural and speak from the heart. We hear the very voice of the man we have learnt to love in public talking intimately in his own home.

We have just had an amazing masters' meeting in which the following motions were carried:

(i) Masters are forbidden to see more of one boy than another!

(ii) Masters are forbidden to have any boys in their room except for "turned" work.

(iii) Masters are forbidden to hear "turned" work in their rooms except between 9 and 1.

(iv) Lower School boys are not to be allowed in any House other than their own without a written leave from their House-masters.

(v) Boys must never be given the run of a master's rooms.

(vi) In future every one will stand all through the offertory in the Communion service.

There were heaps more, but these were the funniest. Anything more priceless than the solemn conclave of old dears passing these resolutions one by one, with here and there an amendment (always rejected without discussion) I never saw. If they think that all this tomfoolery will prevent me from seeing all I want to of Tony, they are mistaken. It wasn't altogether aimed at me. Apparently quite a number of the younger masters make friends with the boys. For the life of me I can't see why they shouldn't. Anyway these "rules" aren't going to make any difference to me. All through this ridiculous meeting I found myself repeating Edith Sichel's priceless aphorism: "There is nothing that cannot be imagined by people of no imagination." It ought to be inscribed over the mantelpiece of every Common Room.

December 19, 1911

We have had some good field-days lately, notably one where I was in command of a small force, which was told off to harass a large advancing troop by repeated ambushes. I nearly ran my people off their feet, but it was rare fun. We just appeared in the most unlikely places, forced the enemy to waste time by deploying, let them get quite close and then scattered and met again farther back along the line and repeated the manoeuvre. The whole business was overwhelmingly successful for we delayed their advance until it ceased to be of any effect. I prefer this sort of tactical scheme to the usual one of merely putting out outposts or an advanced guard. The only way to interest boys in the Corps is to give them some one to fight against every time. I found this out when I started the night scouts. I have been allowed twenty minutes nightly in which to practise my specialist scouts in getting used to working in the dark. It was futile merely getting them accustomed to using their night eyes; unless we opposed one another and tried to track each other down, the whole business failed of its object.

As soon as we had sides they all became ten times more enthusiastic: both their sight and hearing became more acute: there were some titanic struggles and much good resulted from these tactics. It is an eerie business, searching on a pitch-black night inch by inch, over a ploughed field, for an enemy that you expect to pounce upon you from behind if he gets the chance. Of course Hallows and Co. did their best to prevent my having these boys out, on the ground that they would catch cold—and then that they might get into mischief. For once I carried my point and had my own way.

I notice that I'm leaving the school buildings far less frequently than I used to do when I first came here. I have very little temptation to go off to Scarborough for a "razzle" at the theatre or the Winter Gardens. About twice a term suffices now. I don't quite know why. Of course I'm reading much more and I sit up taking notes for books that I mean some day to write. I still refuse to play "bridge." I go to the "club" and sing, dance, eat and drink on rare occasions, but normally I don't go out of my rooms much at night.

I don't spend more time in Common Room than I can help. I just play my games, work out my schemes in form on the teaching of English and mathematics, write innumerable letters and try my hand occasionally on original topics for articles.

Of late the Pioneer has taken several sporting sketches of mine, which has put a new heart in me.

December 31, 1911

Last term ended very quietly. I saw a great deal of Tony in spite of all the silly new regulations.

It was grand to be back in London again: I spent five days with the Chichesters at Hampton and we feasted right royally and went to two shows a day. On Christmas Eve I went down to see my father and mother, who were staying in Bath for the waters. After the riotous orgies at the Chichesters I thought I should find Bath boring. I arrived late at night and was struck by the lights twinkling from hills on every side. My people had got "digs" close under the shadow of the Abbey. I was glad to come to a place which had such a wonderful eighteenth-century flavour, and expected to find out many new truths about Jane Austen, Fielding, Sheridan, Doctor Johnson, Beau Nash and all the other celebrities, but no one in Bath seemed to take any notice of the past. The present was gay enough for them.

So many Army men retire to Bath with a progeny of daughters all of marriageable age, but possessed of no dowry, that they almost wait in a queue outside the station to fasten on to any strange young man who appears. It took me some time to fathom this. I found every one exceedingly kind and hospitable. I could wish I were a better dancer. These Assembly Room shows are glorious, but they make me abominably nervous. I feel all the time gauche and awkward in the presence of these resplendent youngsters: they can all dance superbly, and in the first place I am afraid that the cheapness of my clothes militates against me, and then that no girl could possibly really want to dance with me when she could secure one of these subalterns or rich young squires. All the same once I got into the swing of the thing it was all right. I always found some partners who fitted my steps exactly: I endured agonies with some tall and unresponsive creatures, who obviously were only giving me a "duty" dance, but with small girls like Ruth Harding I got on famously. To enjoy a dance to the full one ought to know one's partner intimately and dance with her for the entire night. At the last two dances I got Ruth to dance with me most of the evening, which apparently scandalized some of the clique which I am supposed to have joined. There can be no place in the British Isles where tongues wag so unceasingly as in Bath. It is like sitting through a scene in "The School for Scandal" to hear the modern Lady Sneerwell and Mrs. Candour chattering about faithless wives. Not one in a hundred of their stories could possibly be true, or else we are living in a most depraved age. It is the first time in my life that I've heard people openly discuss these things. I can't say that I like it. Ruth is a good little soul. She knows nothing about eighteenth-century history but is quite keen to learn. We have explored Prior Park and Castle Combe, and have searched every street in order to find out where all the greater celebrities lived in the great days. In some ways the place has not changed at all since the age of Jane Austen. At one of the Assembly Room dances I met exact replicas of Catherine Morland, Emma, and Mr. Collins. They almost employed the same phraseology. Quaintly enough, not one of them had ever read a word of Jane Austen.

My father and mother love the life here. We take my mother out in a Bath chair into the gardens and she gazes at all the smartly dressed passers-by. My father has got to know all the local clergy: sometimes he takes duty at one of the churches. We have a great number of callers and there is never a lack of anything to do. It is a welcome change from the dullness of our village at home. One of the joys of life here for me is beagling. I go out three times a week with the Wick or the Trowbridge Beagles. I doubt whether there are a finer set of people living than the average beaglers.

They are usually poor (they can't afford to ride), they are passionately addicted to open-air life and are hence sound in mind and limb. Although one feels at times after a heavy run as if one would drop dead from fatigue before one got home, yet the sense of exhaustion is soon ousted by a sense of wild exhilaration in the hunt, the scenery, the people you meet, and the physical fitness of your body. It is so splendid just to turn up at some country house and there, among the sherry and the sandwiches, get into conversation with some flapper or schoolboy or old colonel, all of whom are full of tales of past historic runs and anticipations of the day's sport.

One day we ran from Trowbridge right on to Salisbury Plain, and lost the hounds in the dark by Edington Church—and had to scour the lonely hills for them until eight o'clock. This was on a night when I had promised to take Ruth and two other girls to hear the D'Oyley Carte Company. I got to the theatre at a quarter to ten.

January 19, 1912

I spent most of my days with Ruth for the rest of the holidays, doing all the correct things, having tea tÊte-À-tÊte at Fortt's, going to the theatre on Friday nights (the fashionable night in Bath), walking over Lansdown and down the Avon valley, beagling together (that was best of all: she is a superb athlete) and dancing together whenever possible. Her parents and mine have become firm friends and we are as thick as thieves. I am not in love with her, but she's about the best pal I ever had, which is saying a good deal.

I hear that Bath has been waiting anxiously to hear the announcement of our engagement. What a place! Why on earth can't a man have a girl friend without eternally being suspected of marriage? Ruth and I have never kissed or done anything except treat each other as bosom friends, which we certainly are and probably always shall be.

In spite of the insidious temptations of Bath, to crawl round looking at the shops all day, or to explore the highways and by-ways of Somerset, I have both read and written a good deal.

This seems to me the Golden Age of the novel. There are about thirty or forty people writing really great stuff, full of a philosophy of life, candid, human, extraordinarily real and interesting: their books do not sell in great numbers, but they occupy a place on one's bookshelf that one wants to refer to almost daily. All the other thousand or so novelists don't count at all. I hate the unreality and false glamour of these popular writers: they are like the halfpenny papers which cater for a low and vicious, ignorant taste, only to be compared with the shoddier melodramas that we see on the cinema.

I often wonder how these old ladies get on who crowd daily into Smith's Library in Milsom Street and ask the girl behind the counter for an interesting book. She must have her work cut out to remember the million or so different connotations that the word "interesting" bears to the circulating library subscriber. I wonder how many of them would like to plunge into the inconsequent medley which constitutes my diary. When you see one old lady bearing off under her arm a copy of "The Revelations of a Duchess," Samuel Butler's "Life and Habit," Gertie de S. Wentworth-James's latest narcotic, and some of A. C. Benson's Essays, it almost frights you to think of the aggregate effect of such a mixture. Talk about mixing drinks! The reading habit seems to be ingrained in the British public, but I cannot help wondering how much of the best stuff is ever understood by people who commonly feed on garbage.

I should like to publish a sort of annual guide to be called "The Hundred Best Books of the Year," to be divided up into sections for Parsons, Doctors, Schoolmasters, Socialists, Capitalists, Politicians, Flappers, Nursemaids, Factory Hands, Maiden Aunts, Subalterns, and Young Matrons. I wonder how many would overlap. Not many, I fancy.

I don't think criticisms of books make any appreciable difference to their sale. I have seen heaps of novels, damned by all the papers, go into five or six large editions and others that have been acclaimed as sheer genius die at birth. I wonder, for instance, how many copies of E. C. Booth's "Cliff End" were sold during the first year after its appearance, yet I can't remember any novel which made so deep an impression on me at the time. Yet on every bookstall you see copies of "Paul the Pauper," which every sane man would condemn as simply silly. It has sold over 200,000 copies in two years. It seems incredible: there isn't a single human character in the book, not a single natural sentence: everything is untrue to life in every respect. The passions are laid on with a trowel. There are Grandisonian heroes and double-dyed villains: coincidences of a kind which violate every natural law occur on every other page. The only thing that I can compare to this amazing book is a Lyceum tragedy and the wit of a music-hall comedian. I wonder if England will ever become educated.

From what I have seen of girls in Bath I should say that the system of education in girls' schools is no better than that of boys: they certainly know a little more about English literature, because their mistresses read aloud to them passages out of the novels of Charlotte and Emily BrontË, Jane Austen, Dickens and Thackeray. They also devote more time to poetry than we do, but they forget it all as soon as they leave school. They don't see that these books taken altogether form a complete introduction to life. The average girl I have danced with lately seems to have read nothing at all. Her conversation invariably runs on the same lines. Have I been in London lately? Don't I just adore Du Maurier and Martin Harvey? Do I rink? Do I hunt? Do I punish my boys very severely? Am I sorry that I am not in the Army? Do I like dancing? Do I like girls? Am I an outrageous flirt? Would I like to sit out somewhere more secluded than this rather open spot? Am I certain that I had enough supper? Isn't the way Jim Dainton and Sophie Harrington are behaving "perfectly disgusting"? Don't I love Irene Fairhaven? Isn't Joyce, or Corelli Windyatt, or Moritz, or Stanislaus WÜrm, or whoever is playing on this particular evening, divine, topping, ducky, dinky, perfectly sweet, ripping—or whatever the word of the moment is? Shall I be at the Morrisons' on Tuesday or the Dohertys' on Thursday?

I get most infernally tired of all this claptrap. No one ever says anything that he or she means: it is all superficial. The girls think of nothing but their frocks and the effect they are making on their partners. I want to talk sense and instead have to rattle on with sheer nonsense. I suppose I am getting prosy and sedate, but I do just love talking about books and different views on life. I seem to have no ready change of small-talk. Of course one cannot expect to get to know all the people with whom one dances, but this constant chopping and changing is rotten. I want to keep to one girl, Ruth for preference, all through the night. Then one doesn't have to think of something polite to say: if we feel like silence we just keep silent, if we want to talk we talk, about anything that comes into our heads, serious or gay. We understand each other's moods without having to go through a long rigmarole of introductory icebreaking. One great advantage of Bath is the number of clubs and places where one can browse among the reviews and periodicals of all sorts. How I manage to keep abreast of any modern work in a hole like Radchester, I can't think. Without the Times Literary Supplement and the book reviews in the Telegraph and Morning Post I should be entirely at sea. And yet with all these incentives to read, the ignorance of these townspeople is extraordinary. They nearly all rely on their bookseller for everything they read. They leave the choice always to him.

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