Chapter II: Part 2

One man will ardently support a motion solely to irritate his dearest enemy, who will suffer if the proposal is carried; another will just as strenuously oppose it for no other reason than the fact that his opponent might gain by it if it were carried. The common good seems to be about the last argument to carry weight. There are men here who never speak to one another from year's end to year's end, although they are forced to meet some twenty times a day and even sit next to one another (we sit in order of seniority) at meals. Hallows is, I fear, a case in point. He refused to shake hands with me when I came back this term and I know perfectly well that he will not take my part if I ask him to "ginger" up any boy in his house who shirks his prepared work.

_March 1, 1910_

A dreadful thing has happened. A boy in my form called Chorlthwaite has been expelled for stealing. He happens to have been in Hallows' house. He was certainly a boy without any moral sense at all. Twice I detected him in the act of "cooking" his marks: the first time I talked to him privately and gave him an imposition long enough (one would have thought) to have brought the lesson home to him; on the second occasion I went to see Hallows about it and he as good as told me that it was my fault for putting temptation in his way by making it possible for the boy to do such a thing.

"Trusting to a boy's honour?" he said with an ugly laugh when I tried to explain, "you might just as well trust a bookie with your purse: boys haven't got such a thing. The only way to keep them out of harm's way is never to trust them an inch, that's my way and I've never had a failure yet."

He is in a towering rage over this expulsion: he has told the Head Master that the whole blame lies on my shoulders, because I encouraged the boy to come up to my rooms and ransack my cupboards for chocolates and cakes. (I always allow all the boys in my form to do this.) They are not overfed here and several of them are too poor to be able to afford to go often to the tuck-shop. The wind is apt to give one a prodigious appetite, and most boys are only too glad to avail themselves of my offer. I have only just heard that Hallows issued an edict that no boy in his house was to come to my rooms under any pretext except with a signed order from him. Chorlthwaite revenged himself by helping himself lavishly from the cupboards of Benson, the assistant music master. It is all frightfully depressing. In my Divinity lessons on Sundays and Mondays I have always tried to put before my boys a rigid code of moral ethics and I had hoped that I was meeting with some success.

I trusted them all in everything: I always make a point of letting them give up their own marks and, except in the case of Chorlthwaite, I have never detected a boy in the act of cheating; neither have I come across a single case of cribbing, but there would be little point in that because a boy only cribs through fear of punishment and I punish so rarely that I have even been told by the Head Master that I am unduly lax. Anyway the boy has gone and I am abased and ashamed. I hope that this sort of thing won't happen often or it will wreck all my happiness. If my influence isn't good enough to keep my boys straight it were better for me and for them that I should become a street scavenger or a coal-heaver.

All the same I am not sure that expulsion meets the case. What is to happen to Chorlthwaite in the future? Is he to be branded for life? He had the elements of a Christian in him. I cannot think that his power for evil was strong enough to make him a bad influence over his fellows: their united good influence, on the other hand, would, I should have thought, in time have changed his perverted sense of morality.

Now I am fearful lest he should become callous and bitter and continue to the end in the path which he at present treads. Punishment never yet acted as a sufficient deterrent to any one who really wanted to commit a crime.

One of the minor things in life which infuriates me about schoolmastering is this silly rule about smoking. Every boy knows quite well that practically every grown-up man smokes, and at home he sees not only his father and elder brothers but also every man in the street with a pipe, cigar or cigarette in his mouth, and yet he is supposed to believe that his masters (unnatural beings) never condescend to the vice. In Common Room we may smoke and in the seclusion of our own rooms when there is no chance of any boy suddenly breaking in upon us ... but nowhere else. We are expected to hide all traces of pipes, jars of tobacco, or cigarette boxes before we admit any boy into our presence. It is a laughable pretence, but apt to be infernally annoying. It also strikes me as being immoral: we give our consent to the universal acting of a lie. What makes it worse is the fact that most of the boys smoke secretly far more than is good for them, solely from bravado.

If only, as in some schools, all boys over sixteen who have permission from home were allowed to smoke at certain hours of the day, the difficulty both for them and for us would be solved. It is like the question of drink: in some schools boys are given a glass of beer with their midday meal and again at supper. This effectually removes any sort of temptation to dive into the secret recesses of a bar parlour and there drink deep and long, as is the fashion among the bloods here.

I found this out by accident last Sunday. About four o'clock Jefferies, a brilliant scholar and athlete, came to my rooms, white as to the gills, and in a state of nervous terror unfolded a tale over which I could not help but gloat.

Some half-dozen of the more "sporting" prefects apparently have a habit of disappearing every Sunday after lunch and walking four miles to an inn, where they flirt with a fat and ugly barmaid (I have only Jefferies' word for the "fat and ugly") and drink until such time as they are expected back in their houses. On this Sunday afternoon the place was unfortunately raided by the police and Jefferies (luckily without a school cap) was seized: he gave a fictitious name and address and found that he was expected to appear at the local Police Court to answer the charge against him.

Naturally the whole thing was bound to come out and he would inevitably be expelled. The boy was in a state of pitiable terror and wanted to know what to do. As luck would have it, we did hit upon a scheme before he left the room which left him a loophole. He acted upon my suggestion, which was a simple one, and as it turned out everything was solved satisfactorily. He was fined heavily but did not appear, and I had the immense joy to see the case reported in the local weekly paper and read all unsuspectingly by members of Common Room, who never for one instant guessed that the George Holmes, clerk, etc., who was fined for obtaining drinks after hours, had any connexion with the noble and honourable foundation of Radchester. I suppose I ought not to have been a party to this nefarious scheme, but Jefferies was far too valuable a member of the school to lose. He certainly did not deserve to have his career ruined for a foolish prank like this.

If this came out, I imagine that I should also be thrown out into the streets: I wonder how much of this hushing up goes on in all Public Schools.

I remember that I took Dearden into my confidence over the case of Jefferies. He is a dear, good soul: why on earth he allows the boys to "rag" him as they do I can't think, except that he's too gentle and generous with every one.

He has the next rooms to mine, and whenever I'm out of cigarettes, or whisky, or cakes, I just raid his cupboards. Heavens! that places me exactly on a level with Chorlthwaite: it is true that I have asked him to take whatever he wants whenever he likes from my rooms, but my cupboards are usually bare owing to the appetite of my own form. When I told Dearden about Jefferies he laughed long and loud: he has an infectious laugh, and his already rubicund cheeks become purple with mirth. When his noises had somewhat subsided, except for a few intermittent guffaws that he seemed unable to suppress, he replied:

"Oh! I suppose we all behave like that really: it's a rotten game turning King's Evidence. I caught a fellow in this house with his arm round a flapper's waist on the beach, kissing her with great energy one night last summer term. It did me good to see them. He thought he was safe for expulsion. As a matter of fact I had him up and tried to lecture him, but it was all I could do to keep a straight face. What do you think his defence was? 'It's so jolly monotonous here, sir, with this continual round of work and games and corps and chapel, and never a decent-looking girl for miles.' I couldn't resist asking him how he unearthed so desirable a creature in a district which breeds little but sea-gulls and mussels.

"'I met her in a village about five miles away one Sunday afternoon and ... well, she was as bored with life as I was, so we agreed to walk to meet each other down the beach every Thursday and Saturday night: it meant two and a half miles each way for each of us, sir. It was rather a sweat, but it was worth it, just for the fun of the risk of being caught.' I warned him to be careful in future: I hadn't even the heart to make him promise never to see the girl again; I'm a rotten bad schoolmaster."

From this he went on to a heated disquisition on the advantages of co-education.

I'm in luck to have so delightful a companion as Dearden next door to me. He is about ten years senior to me and has had a chequered career. He has been already at about half a dozen schools and never given any great satisfaction. He is, I imagine, too easy-going: he just drifts along idly; he likes his game of bridge, his whisky, his nightly chatter, and beyond that very little except good holidays. Like most schoolmasters he is quite without ambition: he looks forward to nothing better than his present state. "I can conceive," he said once to me, "nothing more delightful than my present life, if only I were not so persistently 'ragged'; it does so lower a fellow in his own esteem."

I have been attending all the recent debates at the School Debating Society: it is a very formal and rigid body attended usually by some fifteen or twenty persons, all very nervous and none of them able to speak at all coherently or interestingly. Each time I have attended I have said something, but I find I am as bad as the rest: there is an air about the society which effectually prevents one from saying what one means. I don't know what it is. The debates are dull and mainly consist of long uncomfortable pauses, during which no one dares even to whisper, varied by grotesque attempts at humour which make me want to cry.

It seems to me that the power to state an argument concisely, without stammering or hesitation and in an interesting way, is a very necessary factor in our educational equipment. I have, therefore, started another private debating society, which meets in my rooms every Saturday night, limited to boys whom I take during the week. The bait of free food has netted a prodigious catch. I rarely have less than fifty: they lie about on the floor or prop themselves up against the walls. The atmosphere after an hour and a half is indescribable, but we certainly do debate. Blood-feuds seem to spring from the results of our arguments: tempers are really lost, and at times I have imagined that they resort to physical tests to prove the truth of their assertions as soon as they get outside. At any rate I get them interested and they certainly can talk--the difficulty is rather to make them desist.

We vary these debates with charades, mock trials, and readings of plays ancient and modern. Occasionally I read to them humorous extracts, for choice from Saki, Stephen Leacock, or some of the older school of comic writers.

I find that I look forward to this more than to anything else in the week: it unfortunately prevents me from going in to see Vera, but somehow she and I always seem to be able to hit upon mutually free evenings whenever we like. I never allow a week to pass without seeing her. She is my safety-valve: she gives me a proper perspective. After I have quarrelled violently with some colleague or taken some mistake of mine too seriously, she acts as a corrective and makes me see that Radchester is not, as Common Room fondly imagines, the whole of the world. I do not over-emphasize my importance to the State when I have been with her: to her I am just one of a crowd, very ordinary, fairly cheerful and companionable, less flighty than if I were merely "one of the boys," but not necessarily much more precious on that account. England would not materially suffer if Radchester were razed to the ground to-night; Radchester's idea is that England would cease to count if such a dire catastrophe were within the bounds of possibility. Yes, it is very good for me to see Vera weekly. I told her the story of Dearden about the flapper, and she replied somewhat to my astonishment, "Oh! you old goose. Why, I've been out with heaps of Radchester boys. They come into Scarborough quite often. Of course you wouldn't see them: they're not quite such fools, but I wouldn't mind betting that they've seen you with me. Oh! don't get frightened. Boys aren't likely to give you away: they understand only too well. They probably think you're the only sensible master on the staff for having the sense not to pretend that you can do without girls. I think it's a mad idea shutting up four or five hundred boys in a lonely place like Radchester. I shouldn't be surprised at the most horrible things happening there: it's unnatural."

"But, my dear child," I replied, "if you'd read any of the old books you'd realize how necessary it is, if you want to work, to get as far away from distraction as possible. Now what greater or more charming distraction could there be than you?"

"Oh! get along, you old silly! You're always pulling my leg. All the same I'm certain that nothing but harm can come of separating the sexes in this way."

"Oh, then, you are like my friend Dearden, in favour of co-education?"

"What's that?"

But I was not to be drawn into any argument. When I'm out with Vera I'm out for lightness, sweetness and gaiety: I want to forget school altogether. I go back refreshed, revivified and with new ideas. She is the finest pick-me-up I know. She doesn't quote the classics at me. For that alone I could hug her.

_April 3, 1910_

And here I am at the end of my second term. Anything more terrifying than the way in which time flits by here I cannot conceive. I made so many good resolutions at the beginning of term and none of them seems to have materialized. I am still going too fast in mathematics, although I keep a strict hold on myself all the time. I think the secret is that I am more of a lecturer than a teacher. I find it very hard indeed to repeat over and over again the same formulæ, dinning them into thick heads day after day for weeks on end without any variation. I want to keep the boys interested. Some of them make tremendous headway with me: others learn nothing from me at all. In English it is otherwise: most people who come to me for this subject are beginning to read, which is the best possible sign. In the past they seem to have read nothing, not even "The Arabian Nights," nor "The Canterbury Tales," nor "Gulliver's Travels," nor any of the novels of Thackeray, or Dickens, or the Brontës, nor any poetry, nor essays nor plays. Now at least they do search the library for books which I recommend.

The school library is worse than useless. In ecclesiastical history no library can compare with it, but for the standard English classics one may search in vain. Even if the book you want does by some strange chance happen to be there, you are not allowed to remove it unless you are in the Sixth Form. When I remonstrated with the librarian (a foolish thing to do: I have now made him my enemy for life) all he could say was, "My dear man, these rules have been in existence for generations: what was good enough for our fathers is surely good enough for us. Tell your boys to get these books from their House libraries." I have lately been for a tour of inspection round the House libraries. Edna Lyall, Charlotte Yonge, Conan Doyle, George Birmingham, H. A. Vachell, Harrison Ainsworth, Mark Twain, Seton Merriman--yes, but no Swift, no Pope, no Browning, no Thackeray, no Jane Austen, no Fielding, no Johnson, no Milton, no Chaucer, no Keats, no Shelley, no Meredith. Apparently the authorities wish boys to imitate Ruskin and not descend to libraries but to purchase for themselves the masterpieces if they want to read them.

Only the other day the Head Master posted a notice on the school board urging the school to devote less time to the perusal of sixpenny magazines and more to the reading of good, sound literature--very good advice too--but it isn't every boy who can afford to read the best authors, besides which the greatest writers cannot be tackled without due preparation and a sharpening of the wits: the average boy is prejudiced against all the classics as being intolerably dull. It never strikes him that these works were written for our enjoyment, our solace in woe, our constant companions in every mood.

He prefers to talk about the form displayed during the afternoon by his House captain in a school match, or ruminate on his own shortcomings in a recent House match.

Games seem to me to lose half their charm when they are taken so seriously that a boy contemplates suicide because of his failure in a House match.

I might give a hundred lectures in Big School on any subject under Heaven and very few would voluntarily attend, but if I suggest giving a few hints on how to train for games there wouldn't be a vacant seat. I am certain this making a fetish of games is too much of a good thing. There is a limit even to keenness. I love watching a fierce senior final House match and all school matches. I love going "all out" when I am playing any game, but I certainly object to treating it as if it were a religious ceremonial, or rather a display before my Supreme Judge and that on my merits or demerits I shall be saved or damned everlastingly.

Quite the most enjoyable days of this term have been those wild, wet, windy afternoons when I have expended all my energies dashing up and down the shore in that peculiar game, half rugger, half hockey, which is only played at Radchester, but I don't go back to my rooms and weep if I play badly, or preen myself like a peacock if by some lucky chance I give an exhibition beyond the normal.

This has been a better term than last, if only because of the three new men on the staff, all of whom are younger than I am. It was pleasant to watch them first of all roundly chafe at the limitless number of rules and restrictions placed upon us all, and gradually succumb to the tradition and become unquestioning, staunch adherents of a system against which their better judgments first taught them to rebel.

One excitement of the last month has been the visit of the Inspectors: they are due once every five years and are supposed to be selected with scrupulous care. They are fêted for a week and shown everything at its most abnormal and best: it is no fair test at all. For one whole week no boy dared to "rag" even such a pitiable ass as Pennefeather, lest the Head Master and Inspectors should suddenly come in. Richards having carefully worked out an admirable lesson on the Siege of Syracuse meticulously went through it every hour with his form for the whole period on the off-chance and, as luck would have it, no Inspector came near him.

I was not going to change my curriculum for any of the old dodderers, and they called on me daily. The English expert was a gentleman, and simply sat down and took notes of my methods all the time I was teaching, while the mathematical inspector did all the work for me and told me how to teach factors, without so much as worrying to ask how I got on or watching me display my talents at all.

These inspections are merely farcical. Their report was one long succession of "very good," "brilliant," "astonishingly capable," and so on.

I have of late been worrying over the code of honour that prevails among the boys. Apparently to cheat, to lie, to give way to unnatural vice, to torture poor, half-witted, feckless youngsters are venal offences, hardly counting as offences at all, whereas to make a friend of a master, to "cut" or "slack" during a game, to work hard, are unforgivable and heinous sins to be ruthlessly punished with the utmost severity. Mixed up with the innocence and almost angelic tenderness of some young boys there is a strain of dirt, craft, and hollow insincerity that appals me. I would give a good deal to know whence these theories of life have their source. I am certain that such things are not inherent in the boy-nature: it is a fungus-growth that is become part and parcel of the Public School spirit, the tares growing up with the wheat, and no one has the courage to try to exterminate them.

I am always priding myself upon the fact that none of my boys ever "crib," but last week I discovered a boy writing out a theorem in geometry from a fair copy which he had brought in with him. He knew that I always walked round and round the room (I make it a practice never to sit down in a classroom) and counted on my mistaking the fair copy at his side for one of the propositions which he had already written out. I could find it in my heart to wish that all propositions were deleted from the mathematical syllabus. If we were always to invent new exercises this temptation would be removed.

I am glad to be going away to-morrow: I want to think out all these myriad problems of education: I am very tired and rather depressed at the result of all my efforts. I have worked hard this term and yet I have a feeling in my bones that most of my keenness is wasted: I am almost a butterfly on a wheel. The system is going to be too strong for me. I have a lurking suspicion that schoolmastering is not a man's job at all. It only really appeals to humdrum invertebrates who can live in an entirely unreal atmosphere, who like being placed on a pedestal and held up as models of all the more insipid virtues and who can lay down the law and see that it is obeyed to the last letter.

In no profession is the danger of thinking too much so obvious: any one possessed of an introspective or imaginative temperament is quite out of place in a Public School. Every day by reading I find that I am enlarging my mind and getting to know all sorts of interesting things, but most of them are not for the ears of babes and sucklings, and so I am compelled to lead two quite different lives and am become a sort of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

What I do hate about the end of the term is the fact that to-morrow night I shall no longer be able to hear the merry shouts of the boys in the House Room below or the careless chatter of hundreds coming out of chapel or school: there will be no more games; but I have one consolation. I am not, as I did at Christmas, going to a lonely home. Illingworth is coming with me on a walking tour through Devon. I am looking forward to that very much indeed.

III

_May 4, 1910_

I am glad to be back again, but I never enjoyed any holiday in all my life as I enjoyed the one just finished. Illingworth and I took a train to Bideford on the first day of the holidays and put up in the hotel where Kingsley wrote "Westward Ho!" The difference between that old, bizarre, mediæval sleepy town and Radchester is impossible to believe. We spent our first evening talking to old sailors on the quay, and it did not require much imagination to take us back to the brave days of Elizabeth.

It was an idyllic holiday: we never had any definite end in view: when we felt hungry, regardless of the time, we would just go in to the nearest cottage and fill ourselves up with junkets and fruits and cream and then lazily stroll on, regardless of rights of way, over fields, through dense woods, by rabbit-warrens and carefully guarded preserves. Often we had to run from farmers, gamekeepers and their dogs, which added a good deal to the enjoyment: it just gave the extra spice of danger which we wanted. Once we got cut off by the tide and had to row over to Clovelly, where we put up for the night in a white-washed cottage, which smelt so sweetly of lavender and thyme, and was altogether so delectable with its spotlessly clean "flags" and old oak panelling, that we swore that if we ever got rich we would retire there and live as hermits, with a vast library to console us for the loss of the outside world. One day we bought a couple of rucksacks and set our faces towards Hartland Point and tramped all round the coast until we got to Bude. We took several days over this, because neither Illingworth nor I could ever help turning aside to explore any lane which looked promising. We found so many wonderful old Tudor manor-houses and cheery farm-houses that we could never tear ourselves away before we had called and been given leave to explore to our heart's content. Alone, I should never have dared to ask for so strange a courtesy, but Illingworth is one of those boys who no sooner sees than he must possess, a trait that he must have inherited, for his father is one of the most famous and successful cotton men in Manchester. In the end we arrived at Chagford. I don't quite know why, except that Illingworth liked the sound of the name. We got there by way of Okehampton and Sticklepath.

He had become very interested in John Trevena's novels, "A Pixy in Petticoats," and "Arminel of the West," which he unearthed from my shelves at school, and when he heard that we were in the neighbourhood of the scenes therein depicted, nothing would content him but that we should see for ourselves whether the people were as delightful or the scenery so wonderful as Trevena had made them out to be; so we tramped round the fringe of Dartmoor and put up at the first house we saw that appealed to us on the outskirts of Chagford.

Looking back on it now I can honestly say that in this sweet village, nestling under the shadow of the great moor, I found my ideal home: no other place has ever given me, from the first moment I saw it in the distance, quite the same sense of security and home. We were welcomed at Fernworthy View as if we were prodigal sons returned home at last.

We had a wonderfully capacious sitting-room with a piano, which we thumped on every night, singing ribald songs, "Buffalo Gals," "The Mulligan Guards," and the latest musical comedy bits with Betty and Thomasin, the two daughters of the house who waited on us. Before we had been there three days we had made friends with the parson, the doctor, one or two hunting men and all the villagers. We used to go and gossip in the pubs, over the counter at the shops, and up by the village pump opposite the church, where the majority of the yokels used to collect in the evening to discuss the doings of the day: we learnt a good deal of local scandal, accounts of the day's sport with the hounds, or fishing or shooting. Wherever we went we seemed to make friends.

And then by day, when the villagers were at work, we used to go out on to the moor and follow the Wallabrook, trying to trace each part of the stream to its source.

The moor always has an amazing effect upon me. I know that Eden Phillpotts and John Trevena talk a good deal about the malicious spirit of the great monoliths and the permanence of the stone, making even more futile by contrast the efforts of puny and transient man, but I find Dartmoor infinitely consoling. Here at Radchester I certainly do feel a malign influence in the ugliness of the flat lands and the hideous waste of sand and grey water, but there is a richness about the moor that makes Nature there seem much more the Eternal Mother and Generous Giver, sympathizer at any rate with strong and lusty youth. Grandeur and beauty in scenery surely can never do anything but elevate and purify the spirit of man. I am never happier than when I have scaled the top of one of these Tors and can turn north, south, east, and west and see no living soul. The wind sweeps through me, the sun shines for me alone, all the blue of the heavens is mine. I am nearer to the elemental things than at any other time in my life. I am no longer introspective, dwelling on human imperfections; I am just filled to the brim with thankfulness, and opening my arms wide I feel that I am about to be taken into the embraces of my Lord Himself: He is never so near as He is on these Mounts of Transfiguration: for all hills tend to transfigure not only God but man. As he rises farther from the valley in body, so does his soul expand. Young Illingworth and I found that we could talk of things on the moor that we should never have dreamt of discussing elsewhere. After a long and arduous climb, just to throw oneself down on the heather and gaze languidly, in sweet and utter content, up into the sky! How remote and unreal Radchester and all it stands for seemed at such moments, how small and ridiculously inept the quarrels and troubles that loom so large in Common Room; these hills certainly sweep away any malice that one may feel, or grudge that one may bear against one's fellow-men. Like St. Peter I never want to come down from these heights: I want to live in that rarefied atmosphere always, but the workaday world calls and we have to descend again into the fray.

Betty and Thomasin, as an alternative to the noises on the piano, used to get us to go into the kitchen and read aloud to them till bedtime stories out of "The Arabian Nights."

As an alternative to the moor there was always the Teign, in which river we used to paddle and bathe and shoot at fish with a horrible old revolver which Illingworth had been prevailed upon to buy from a poacher. Another of our sources of pleasure was an old disused mill, a survival of the eighteenth century. Illingworth found a chain by which we could be hauled up from floor to floor by a system of pulleys on the fifth floor: he never tired of this particular form of amusement, and on really wet days we used to spend hours pulling one another up and down like sacks of wheat.

Alas, it was all too soon over: the weeks sped by like wildfire and yesterday was a day of sad partings from many firm and fast friends among the moor-folk. At any rate we have promised to go back. It seems incredible to think that it was only yesterday ... and here I am making out my scheme of work for the term, paying last term's accounts, getting ready to renew my feud with Hallows, full of determination like poor old Perrin in that school-story of Hugh Walpole's that this term shall be better. I really will not go so fast in mathematics, I will instil my own sense of morality in my boys, I will do something to alter the ridiculous codes which govern their mode of conduct. At any rate to-night I feel amazingly strong and healthy, and I am as fit for the fray physically as a man can be.

_June 10, 1910_

I suppose each individual master unconsciously draws to him a peculiar type of boy. I begin to think that the pariah finds himself especially attracted to me.

There have been two horrible rows this term, one during the first week when I was fresh from the healthy wilds of Dartmoor, full of vigour to instil my high ideals into the minds of all who came into contact with me.

Immorality appears to be all-prevalent; some of the finest boys in the school had to leave at a moment's notice, among them Illingworth. Even now, a month after the event, I can scarcely credit it. I cannot believe that it is the small boys' fault. Jefferies came up to say good-bye and appeared to be heart-broken: yet he was the most flagrant offender of them all. I felt quite unable to cope with the disaster at all. I didn't know what to say to him. I tried to elicit from him what it was that first of all started boys off in this hideous vice, and I think he tried his best to give me a rational answer.

"I suppose with me, sir," he began, "it was pure boredom. Life here seemed so narrow; there was no possibility of an outlet for the emotions. We are so narrowly confined, so closely watched, so driven and looked after every hour of every day: the routine is killing to the imagination. Then comes along a good-looking small boy; a longing comes over one to make a friend of him, but the school rules most stringently forbid that, so we are driven to secrecy and secrecy breeds vicious ideas. We can't meet openly: we have to think out lonely and unlikely places: then human nature asserts itself and the rest follows only too quickly."

"But surely," I interposed, "surely the thought of your own honour, if not of the physical ills that are bound to follow, act as a deterrent? Sermons and house-master's warnings and so on must have some effect."

"None, I'm afraid, sir, when it comes to the point; the attraction proves too strong and the added spice of danger, as in the case of those Sundays in the public-houses, is a tremendous incentive. The sin seems to lie, not in the action, but in being found out. There are heaps and heaps of fellows who have left here loaded with honours, thought by all of you to be paragons of virtue, veritable Sir Galahads, who in reality are infinitely worse than any of us who are now being sacked. You don't cleanse your Augean stable by firing out a score or so of unfortunate wretches every year as a horrible warning to the rest. Immorality is not like a fire which can be stamped out; if there is any certain method it lies in gentle handling and weaning us gradually from impure thoughts to higher things. I know that you are awfully sick with me and I feel a rotten swine to you, as if I had betrayed a trust, but you came too late for us; probably you'll do more for the new kids. It can only be done by catching us before we are bored and making us really interested in literature, music, art--something with Beauty in it which is not compulsory. I know the prevalent opinion is that those who are interested in art are the worst of all: the truth is quite the reverse, the worst offenders are the unimaginative beefy bloods. There seems to be a lurking suspicion in the average schoolmaster's mind that all beauty is effeminate, if not actively immoral. I believe in reality that immorality is as much due to the suspicious and not too clean minds of our masters as to any other agency.

"We are never directly spoken to on the matter. If a house-master does talk about it he blushes and stammers and talks about sex as if it were in itself foul. He makes a quite innocent youngster begin to take a delight in these hidden things. The truth is that they ought not to be hidden at all. Once people begin to talk openly and discuss without false shame all these matters, this vice will disappear, not before. I've got to suffer, so there's no point in my making excuses, but you, sir, if you are really keen on getting rid of this evil, remember that the only way to do it is to get hold of boys and interest them in life. Give them something to occupy their minds, so that there is no empty corner of their souls swept and garnished ready for the occupation of the spirit of evil."

It is altogether horrible; all my best friends have gone, the very boys that I had trusted most and loved most. I cannot imagine evil of young Illingworth after our month together on Dartmoor. I dare swear no evil thought once crossed his mind the whole time we were together. I am certain in my inmost mind that this vice is not an essential part of life as some writers try to make out; I do not believe that youth must pass through this stage of adolescence and that it would be uncanny if he did not give way to his natural feelings.

I believe one reason for our failure here to cope with this dire disease is the lack of feminine society. I wonder how co-education schools stand in this matter. I believe the natural throwing of boys into the constant society of girls would result in a total elimination of all foulness, whether of thought or deed.

One of the most disgusting things in all my life here is the uncleanness of so many boys' minds. I hate the idea of a Bowdlerized Shakespeare, for instance, and yet when I come across a passage that could possibly be construed in a dirty way, I find my boys sniggering, loving the innuendo: it is then that I want to make the reading of Rabelais compulsory: that would cure them. I have never passed occasions like this without bursting forth into a vehement tirade against the clod-like state of a mind that can find matter for jesting in such things.

It is the secrecy that ruins everything. If, for instance, I were openly to proclaim my friendship for Vera Buckley, whom I still see weekly, I should be suspected at once of having seduced her. Just as it is imagined that no older boy can make a friend of a younger boy without having some ulterior, filthy motive, so no man can be seen with a shop-girl (or any girl for the matter of that) without giving rise to scandalous suggestions as to his attitude towards her.

I wish some members of Common Room could be privileged to hear the sort of conversation that passes between Vera and myself. She is something of a philosopher, and her outlook on life, which is eminently cheery and healthy, does me a world of good when I am depressed. I talk over with her all my schemes for educational reform and she is intensely sympathetic and alive. She offers a vast number of amazingly good suggestions: one of her most frequent points is that I should try to teach my boys not to divide all her sex into two quite separate divisions, (1) their mothers, sisters, and girls whom they meet at dances, parties and games, to whom they are studiously courteous and chivalrous, and (2) the rest, shop-girls and others, whom they ogle in the streets, take out for walks, kiss and fondle and treat as instruments for their own pleasures, to be discarded at will as soon as they tire of them.

_July 4, 1910_

The golden days of summer are fast slipping by and I do little else but bathe, play cricket, and read in my spare time.

Most of the boys hate having to play cricket every afternoon of the term and chafe exceedingly at the tediousness of "half-holidays," when they are expected to stay out at their games for four and a half hours. The more sensible take out rugs and books, and bask in the sun until they are called upon to field, but the temptation to go off and bathe must be pretty strong when you can hear the waves softly lapping on the beach below, calling you to come and cool yourself in the water. There is a most absurd rule here that only school prefects may bathe in the sea: the rest of the school has to content itself with the covered-in baths at stated and only too rare intervals.

These rules seem to me to be the ruin of the school: long summer afternoons ought to be given up to freedom and jollity. Boys should be encouraged to go as far away as possible for picnics, bicycle rides, and walks, to keep themselves fresh, instead of which "roll-calls" are held at ridiculously close intervals; not more than two hours are ever allowed to pass without assembling the whole school to answer their names. The place seems to be run on the basis of "Out of sight, up to mischief." Every one suspects everybody else.

The Common Room garden, which is the only place in the whole neighbourhood where one can see flowers growing, possesses one tennis-court; the rivalry to secure it for a game among those who like tennis is comic to watch. Intense hatred is bred if any one dares to use it more frequently than any one else. If any of the junior members of the staff try to get a game among themselves they are taunted with a lack of loyalty and duty. It is the young man's privilege to keep an eye on the games, to umpire at cricket and see that fellows don't "slack."

Luckily for me, I much prefer the society of the boys, and I play or umpire every day. Equally luckily I am tremendously keen on fielding and I thoroughly enjoy every game I play, so long as I am not expected to take it too seriously. But I certainly sympathize with those unfortunates who hate the game and yet are compelled to waste all these precious afternoons chasing after a ball, not caring in the least who wins or loses or how badly or well they play.

Quite a number of boys have told me that they would infinitely prefer that there were no "half-holidays." The hours in school pass so much quicker. If only the surrounding country were passably interesting and we could get up excursions to explore woods or churches, it would to some extent solve the difficulty, but though it is less depressing here in the summer than in the winter, there is no beauty anywhere, nothing to call one away from the eternal round of cricket.

The only break is Speech Day, a most amazing ceremony which gives one furiously to think. We had an Archbishop and several famous men of the day to talk to us this year, but the sole business of the affair seemed to be to feed the parents as lavishly as possible and to laud ourselves up to the skies. The only criterion of success, to judge from the Head Master's speech, was the number of Higher Certificates gained in the annual examination. He obviously makes a fetish of this; he publishes it in all the papers and recurs to it at constant intervals, in sermons, at masters' meetings and at dinner-parties. Apparently we stand or fall by this one qualification. Anything further from the true end and aim of education it would be hard to imagine. For this one day of speeches and lunch the whole place is transformed: it becomes almost civilized, a part of the world that we know outside. There are motor-cars, pretty, smartly dressed girls with their mothers, and proud fathers full of malapropos comments, and--most important of all--no compulsory cricket. For one whole day we get a chance to breathe, to look round and talk, and at night if a boy is lucky he may even dine with his people at their hotel in Scarborough.

It need scarcely be said how flat the rest of the term seems after this great day, so eagerly looked forward to, so long in coming, so quickly over when it does arrive.

I think I derived most of my joy from comparing the garb of my colleagues on this day with their ordinary, every-day habiliments.

I suppose no class of men dresses more shabbily than the schoolmaster; as he is so abominably underpaid that is not to be wondered at. What is a matter for comment is the extraordinary costume he dons on gala occasions.

Grey frock-coats with black trousers and a straw hat, dark morning coat with brown boots and a bowler--there is no end to the grotesqueness of the combination of ill-assorted garments. We look like a lot of master grocers tricked out for an annual convention. After all, clothes are not a very important part of life, but it does somehow emphasize our aloofness from the workaday world to appear clad like Rip Van Winkles once a year. Our gaucherie when we are called upon to talk to our visitors would make even a shop-walker wince. We seem to have lost the art of conversation: our tongues are rusty; we have no commonplaces, we cannot even hand round tea or food without falling over one another. We feel all the time that these parents are laughing at our awkwardness, that the girls have labelled us all as old fossils, bloodless, not unlike harmless lunatics: their brothers will certainly not tend to remove that impression when asked.

Altogether I felt ashamed of my profession for the whole of that day. I would willingly forget it.

I have been wondering lately whether I am not wasting such talents as I have at Radchester. I certainly do not want to stay here for ever with no prospect of ever earning more than £300 a year, and yet there is no denying that on the whole I love the place and that I feel an insidious temptation to take root here. Just by way of experiment I have answered a few advertisements to see if I have any chance of getting anything else.

One man wanted me to act as secretary to a firm of motor manufacturers, but that seems to be tame and dull compared with this.

The Board of Education have offered me a post as Junior Inspector of Board Schools in Essex, but I dislike the smell of board schools and constant travelling up and down the county does not appeal to me at all. The most tempting offer has come from India, to take over the job of Professor of English at a native university. I dallied with that idea for some time, but my people were against it, so I reluctantly refused it. The pay was good and the life would certainly be interesting, besides which I should then be able to gratify my desire to travel. The East is always calling me, ever since I first began to read Conrad. But should I find an Illingworth or a Benbow among the natives? I imagine the contingency to be a remote one. On the other hand, I should broaden my mind and come into contact with men and women with ideas as different as possible from those current here.

One result of my tentative efforts to leave has been a sort of restlessness which has made me buy guidebooks to all sorts of places. Illingworth and I had arranged to spend the summer holidays at Chagford, but now that he is gone I am likely to be at a loose end and I don't know where to go. I've thought of the Highlands, the Lakes, Ireland, Cornwall and Wales: I cannot make up my mind. I find that I want a companion and there is no one in Common Room with whom I should care to go.

_July 31, 1910_

Now that I have come to the end of my first year as a Public School master, I am trying to take stock of the situation. I have learnt a good deal since last September and I certainly am devoted to my job. I have not yet got over my initial nervousness. I still have nightmares of my boys getting out of hand and yet I have had no great difficulty in keeping order. I certainly don't like taking prep. or looking after "Hall" while three hundred and fifty boys eat, but I can cope with any number of boys up to forty and keep them at work. During the last week I have been invigilating and correcting examination work: my boys have not done particularly well in mathematics. Apparently I still go too fast or else I am unable to explain adequately. Compared with my English work I find mathematics uncommonly dull. In English I have got some really good results. Some boys have written short stories, others plays, others verses, many of which show originality, good sense, and a capacity for expression which I certainly did not get last year. I have interested them, too, in reading: they borrow all my books, new and old. I read extracts from all sorts of authors in form and try to whet their appetites for more. I only wish that instead of a paltry two hours a week I could inveigle the Head to give me an hour a day. All the other English masters here confine themselves to analysis, parsing, précis, and one play of Shakespeare per year. I have run through (lightly) the whole course of English Literature in the last three terms and some boys have specialized on drama, others on ballads, others on fiction and a few on poetry, each following his own bent.