January 13, 1914

Elspeth is now with me at my father's home and in bed with "flu." While we were there I got an invitation from Gregson's to write a book for them on education, so Elspeth and I went straight down to Bath, and I shut myself and wrote "Reform in Education" in ten days. It amounts to 50,000 words. I find that I simply cannot write slowly. I start to plan a thing out, then my brain refuses to take in anything except matter for the book. I look on meals as a needless interruption. I want to write all day and all night. The MSS. is now being typed for me, and I am resting, by reading novels and magazines, playing bridge and billiards with my father-in-law, and alternately quarrelling and making it up with Elspeth.

March 3, 1914

There have been endless rows in the school this term and wholesale expulsions. House-masters are told all about them, and the rest of us kept in ignorance. What the whole body of the school knows is hidden from us poor juniors. On what principle I wonder? Elspeth and I fight daily over books. She dislikes any papers, magazines or books in the drawing-room, and I hate to see the best room in the house given over to nothing but clothes in the making. Having sold under compulsion all the books that I so much valued I am now trying to build up another library. This naturally costs money, but, as I frequently tell Elspeth, I can't get ideas to write about unless I read a good deal.

My neurasthenia has been so acute lately that I have had to see the school doctor: he wants me to go into a sort of retreat for the Easter holidays alone. I'd far rather die. Because I attended every debate and dramatic reading at the School Debating Society last term I have been elected president. We have had debates on conscription, Lloyd George, and classical and modern subjects. I have brought up the average attendance from forty to about a hundred. I shall not be content until we get the majority of the school to attend. These debates, etc., take place in Big School on alternate Saturday evenings from 7 till 8.45. That means dinner at 6.30, which precludes the possibility of many members of Common Room attending. When I first began to go the meetings were rather disorderly and riotous, and no one cared much about the subject. There were long and awkward pauses, but now we have managed to rouse a good deal of opposition, and people come with very carefully prepared speeches, and there are less irrelevancies. I have had one severe attack of appendicitis, but it passed off after a few hours. Of course the school has had the usual diseases, mumps and diphtheria. The whole town is down with the latter: it is said that the water is bad, the milk is bad, and the sanitary arrangements mediÆval. It is really the most backward, sleepy place I ever came across. The District Council fight among themselves, but never do anything for the public weal. Most of the members are drapers, butchers, and bakers, and consider nothing but their own interests.

I have been elected to the Sunday Afternoon Literary Society. There are eight boy members and eight masters. We meet at 3.15 on alternate Sunday afternoons, and a paper is read for an hour, and afterwards there is tea. This society has been in existence for fifty years. There is never any discussion, which is a great pity. At the end of term a Shakespeare play is read.

The first papers I heard were on "The Schoolmaster in Literature," Francis Thompson and Kipling, and they were all extremely interesting. Elspeth and I have dined with various members of the staff. They give good dinners, but the conversation is not very thrilling; they dislike anything out of the ordinary; they "never get the time to read," and consequently won't talk "book-shop," which I am beginning to fear is my only subject. They disapprove of my beagling because it takes me away from the games; they don't know, of course, that I've been forbidden to play games. As a matter of fact, I frequently referee the "kids'" games, which are really amusing. They have a quaint habit here of playing all their school matches in the Christmas term, and all their House matches this term. Ingleby, who runs the games, is a passionate devotee of "Rugger," and puts the fear of God into every boy who comes near him. He is altogether delightful, and has a most charming wife, but he cannot brook being "crossed." He dislikes and distrusts me because I said somewhere that I thought games were overdone at the Public Schools. His belief is that games have been, and are, the saving of England, the one outstanding glory of our national life. To this idea he clings through thick and thin, and opposition to it only rouses him to fury. He has a strong face, and is one of the giants here. His influence is enormous. He is an ideal schoolmaster of the old swashbuckling type; he rules by fear and the rod; all his boys love him almost as much as they dread him; he always looks as if he were going to knock any man down who ventured to disagree with him. I like him, but the devil that is in me always prompts me to get up against him; he is a great stickler for convention; the first time we crossed swords was on a very minute point of etiquette. A boy in his House, who is taking the Army exam., wanted special coaching in English, and so, not being able to find any classroom vacant in which to take him I agreed to visit him in his study. Of course I ought to have asked Ingleby's leave. I forgot, and he got furiously angry. "Young upstarts disregarding rules of a thousand years' growth," and so on.

I like my Army class work. The English required for Sandhurst and Woolwich is of a very low standard, but it is amusing. These general questions, prÉcis, reproductions, and so on, give me a chance of introducing favourite passages from great authors, and I try my hardest to make them read for themselves by running a sort of library in my classroom. I fill up all my vacant shelves with "likely" books, and just let them help themselves. The worst of it is that they nearly always forget to bring them back. I find this as expensive a hobby as having boys continually to tea at Radchester used to be.

My other English form are preparing for the London Matriculation, which, as things stand, is the best examination in English that I know. I concentrate all my powers on literature. I try to build up a coherent idea of the history of English literature all through, and most of the boys respond to the idea splendidly. The worst of it is that they come to me, for the most part, desperately ignorant; three or four plays of Shakespeare, and Sheridan and Goldsmith comprise their whole stock of knowledge. On the other hand, there is a handsome prize awarded annually (£20 worth of books), called the "Carfax," for the boy who shows the best knowledge on Shakespeare, three set authors, and a general paper on all the best authors from 1800 to the present time. This stimulates the senior boys, and in this, the Lent term, every year, some twenty or thirty boys really try to make up for the lamentable deficiency in this branch of their education.

May 5, 1914

I find that I am getting slack in writing up my diary. I don't quite know the reason unless it is that "happy is the nation that has no history" applies equally to individuals. Elspeth and I are getting on much better, by fits and starts. We still quarrel, but more rarely, and only when I forget to show her some of those "little, unremembered acts of kindness and of love" which make so great a difference to life. We had one wonderful day at the Oxford and Cambridge Sports, when I introduced her to all the old Oxford gang. She was thoroughly in her element there. She was not born to be a schoolmaster's wife. She needs gaiety, amusement, heaps of friends, and an incessant round of youthful pleasures. I wish I could get a job in London if only for her sake. She gets very tired of the everlasting topics of conversation at Marlton, bulbs and babies. All true Marltonians are keen gardeners, and they all have large families. I suppose four years of Radchester made me forget the joys of a garden ... because really the gardens of Marlton are a joy for ever; apparently the very rarest and most delicate flowers will bloom in Marlton when they would die in any other soil in England.

As soon as the holidays started Elspeth and I went to London in order that I might continue to bombard the editors and publishers with copy. There wasn't much doing, but we saw numbers of quite excellent plays. I received a commission from Goddard's to edit a dozen plays of Shakespeare and other dramatists for use in schools, for which they promised me £50. I didn't spend as much time over them as I could have wished. My old disease of hurry made me write Introductions which I ought to have done much better, but my object was to say as little as possible and not to overburden the juvenile mind with a million unnecessary notes. It was an easily earned £50. I finished my anthology, which I called "A Cluster of Grapes," and started to produce a School Mathematical Course, which I eventually gave up because it bored me.

Elspeth and I went as usual to the point-to-point meetings this year, and the Bath dances, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. There are still the same old cliques to be seen parading up and down Milsom Street, weaving petty scandals over the tea-table at Fortt's, girls becoming engaged and breaking it off, strange, unaccountable weddings and stranger divorces. We are now looked upon as an old married couple and no longer interesting.

July 14, 1914

This has been a good summer term; it was pleasant to come farther south at the beginning of May instead of having to cut oneself off from all the joys of summer by going to Radchester. Marlton in the summer is exquisite: the town is just one blaze of colour: it is much too hot, but luckily Elspeth loves the heat, and I don't mind it much. Besides there is splendid bathing in the open-air school swimming-bath. Financial affairs have been a constant thorn in my flesh. Here I get £200, and on that I have to keep Elspeth, and a servant at £18 a year, a house the rent of which is £35 and the taxes £15. I give her £2 a week on which to keep house, and we spend money like water by travelling in the holidays. Worst of all I am still paying off old Oxford debts, which drag us down still further, and my books and tobacco bill average about £3 a term. All the other masters have private means and live like princes. I suppose we ought to economize by having no people to stay with us, but it would be deadly for Elspeth while I was in school if she was always alone, and I, too, like old friends to talk to at night. Consequently we are never free from visitors. Her father and mother and brothers and sisters have all been down, and several old Radcastrians, including Jimmy Haye and Montague, both of whom love it.

I have had the luck to get Tony's first forty poems, that he showed up to me for work at Radchester, printed in a monthly review. I am now waiting to be operated on for appendicitis. I am going into the nursing home on the 27th, as soon as ever I have finished correcting all my exams. I am funking it horribly. It would be dreadful if this were to be the end before I've really come to understand Elspeth and treat her as she ought to be treated. I do so want also to write something worth writing before I die. It's no good being morbid over it. I only hope that the taking out of this offending member will mean the eradication of all uncleanness and offence in me. It ought to make me better tempered, more long-suffering, more loving and lovable, and altogether more Christian and chivalrous. I read a paper to the Sunday Afternoon Society on "The Predecessors of Shakespeare"; as usual I prepared it too hastily. I had far too much to say to get through it in an hour. Before I knew about my operation I had accepted an invitation to lecture at Stratford-on-Avon on the teaching of English. These summer conferences are extraordinarily good things, and one learns heaps of "tips" about how to tackle a subject in the proper way. I still go on experimenting with my form. I have no reason to be displeased with their progress in literature. I have had quite a number of original pieces of work shown up. I have got to know two boys in particular very well. Every week they read papers to me on any subject, and we sit round a schoolhouse study table and argue. They are as different as possible from each other. One is a brusque, quite clever, very athletic lover of sensuous poetry; he pins his faith to Byron, Swinburne, Rossetti, William Morris, Edward Dowson, and Arthur Symons; his name is O'Dowd. The other, Raynes, is a quiet, demure scholar, who does not get on very well in his House; his passion is Meredith. I get more pleasure out of these two than out of any other boys in the school. By far the rottenest thing I have to do is private tuition. This means taking two or three very backward boys, usually in mathematics, for an hour three times a week. For this we get extra pay, £2 2s. for each boy! That is six guineas for thirty-nine hours' work. Whereas I have before now got six guineas for an article which hasn't taken me more than thirty-nine minutes. I grudge the time I have to devote to these boys more than I can say; they know nothing, they never will know anything, they don't want to know anything. And yet one can't refuse to take them because every penny is important.

We have one great function here in the summer term before which everything else fades, and that is Speech Day. This consists of a wonderful service in the Priory, then we go to Big School, where prizewinners read their papers, prizes are awarded, and speeches are made and large luncheon-parties are given in each House-master's house. The vast concourse then wanders slowly down to the fields to watch the old boys' cricket match, and at night there is a school concert. The music here is world-famous. The school concerts are magnificently done. We have a large album of school songs, and selections are taken from these, and there is usually some oratorio or cantata. The festivities leave one slightly limp, and there is not much work done during the rest of the term. The most surprising feature about it all to me was the comparison between the Radchester Speech Day and the Marlton Speech Day. The Radchester parent was a sight for the gods; he was always wealthy, nearly always possessed of a distinct accent, and wore clothes to match; he was hearty, bluff, and a good fellow; his womenfolk gave me no pleasure. At Marlton the parents seemed to be the salt of the earth; they were all aristocrats in name if not in money. The majority of them are parsons and soldiers, and practically to a man old Marltonians. Loyalty to his school is the one shining characteristic of the Marltonian; to them there is simply no other Public School in England. I don't wonder; the boys are perfectly happy. They live secluded from the rotten side of the world in a valley which takes the breath away for sheer loveliness. They have a great tradition extending from the dark ages. There is a saying that no matter where he is or in what circumstances an old Marltonian can be detected at once by his geniality, his good-breeding, his entire absence of "side," and soft, slow, lazy way of speaking. Quietly and insidiously the place is beginning to take hold of me. There is no doubt whatever that I enjoy life much more than I used to; I am beginning to observe beautiful things, nature particularly. I find myself standing stock-still looking at the clouds racing past the moon on a clear night behind the Priory; the lilac and laburnum thrill me like an exquisite melody; the green of the fields, the thickly leaved trees, flowers in a garden, all sorts of things that didn't seem to me to matter much are now becoming ineffably precious. The lights in the schoolhouse studies late at night, seen as one crosses the court on the way home from school and chapel, are amazingly beautiful and peaceful.

July 24, 1914

Here I am on the eve of being operated on. I wish it could be postponed for a bit. There seems to be the chance of civil war in Ireland, and the row in the Balkans looks like spreading. Elspeth and I are thinking of going to Scotland when I am convalescent, but I should like to cross over to Ireland and see really what is happening. We really have treated Ireland throughout the ages damnably. I wonder what will come of it all. I have finished correcting all my examination papers, and done my reports, added up my marks, and now all is over. Elspeth has been kindness itself to me lately; there is no doubt of the depth of our love for each other. I have been making a will, which seems silly because I don't leave much; about £150 worth of debts, and £1000 to pay them with from my insurance. Of course there'll be the furniture, but that's not much of an heirloom. I have had several horrible qualms about death, but, good heavens! it's no good worrying. I wonder whether Elspeth will marry again. After all, it won't matter to me when I'm gone. This is a silly way to talk. This has been a rotten day. I have said good-bye to a few boys, packed up what I shall want for the nursing home, a volume of Chesterton and a volume of Stevenson. I bicycled up to the golf links to say good-bye to the country that I have now so learnt to love; and after tea, in a bowler hat and "going-away" suit and suit-case, I walked up to the nursing home. It's a rotten game doing all this in cold blood. Elspeth stayed with me in my room, which is clean, comfortable, and faces south, until the nurse turned her out. I am now left alone, and Elspeth isn't to be allowed to see me until after the operation. It was agonizing parting from her, and I dread the night. I haven't slept for a very long time decently, and I certainly don't expect to to-night. I've been allowed as a special concession to finish writing up my diary to date. It seems all very futile now. I've made jolly little of my life. I've loved a few boys, taught a few of them something, taught a great many nothing. I have irritated some very good people by giving publicity to ill-considered judgments, and I have given of my all to one girl; I live in and for and by Elspeth alone. She is the whole of life to me. God grant that we may be spared to one another and learn to be truly and always happy together.

---