Chapter IX: Part 9

We have had one or two strange temporary masters. One, an elderly scholar, had an eccentric habit of always searching the bottoms of one's trousers for matches: he had once heard of a man being burnt alive that way and was in a continual fright lest it should happen to some one whom he knew. We have got a new Sixth Form tutor, a fellow of Queen's, Oxford, who has become a firm friend of mine. He is, like most of my colleagues, very well off and has furnished himself with a splendid library which he allows me to use. I have done a good deal of writing and much reading: my books are costing me less because I am doing a good deal of reviewing for the London papers. One of the strangest effects of the war up to now has been its result upon the world of papers and books. Paper is very expensive and there is great difficulty in getting MSS. printed and bound, but people are all buying books in great numbers, particularly poetry and fiction.

Owing to my own smaller successes I have received invitations to meet and to stay with some of the leading writers of the day, which needless to say I have accepted, though if I go I shall have to go without Elspeth, for as soon as it was possible we took her by car from the nursing home in Lewes all the way to her home at Bath, where the doctor says she must stay for some months.

I can't face next term without her: I don't know what I shall do and yet I cannot conscientiously expect her to come back to me until she is quite fit to look after the house again. At present she is recovering very slowly and looks dreadfully weak and thin.

_May 4, 1915_

When the term was over I did go round to the various houses to which I had been invited and met the queerest people. I was nervous and irritable without Elspeth and never stayed more than a night or two in any one house and kept on rushing back to see how Elspeth was getting on.

These Easter holidays have been rather nightmarish because of Elspeth's illness. I could not settle down to anything, and of course we could not go out much because she could not walk. On the other hand, for some reason I was unable to concentrate my attention on writing. Everything was in a state of blur owing to the shock I sustained at her operation. In some degree last term was like the same term two years ago when I was engaged. I tried to hurl myself into my work: I refereed on and coached the junior games, I devised all sorts of schemes to interest my boys in English, I had boys up to tea to remove some of my loneliness, but I was gradually going out of my mind because I had no Elspeth by me to soothe me. And all the time the war has been weighing very heavily upon me. The waste of the flower of this country is frightful. On April 23 young Rupert Brooke died, and we have lost the premier poet of the age before he had had the chance to transmit a quarter of the splendid things that were burning inside him. Somehow I feel his loss more than that of any one I have known.

XVII

_July 31, 1915_

This term has been the worst in my recollection. Elspeth was not allowed to come back at the beginning of term because she was not able to cope with the housework, so I thought to compromise by going up to Bath every week-end to see her. I did this, but the five days between each visit became so ghastly that I could not face them. I begged her to come back at all costs to save my brain. She did so for a few weeks, to her mother's intense indignation and her own no little wrath. Both of them thought it merely gross selfishness on my part to demand such a thing, as of course in a sense it was. But I really was ill. The local doctor could do nothing and sent me up to a specialist in Harley Street, who told me to go to the Highlands for the whole of the summer holidays and take a complete rest. I'm suffering from an over-active brain. So to-morrow we are to set off for the north of Scotland.

This term has passed uneventfully enough so far as the school is concerned. I went to see the Bishop about being ordained and he welcomed the suggestion, but I am still not clear in my mind about it. I have always had a hankering after the church, but I wonder if it is simply that I may find an excuse to preach. I know I am always preaching in form. I spend the whole week preparing subjects for my Sunday's divinity lesson, which is really a hotch-potch of the week's events with a moral tag appended.

I have watched a few cricket matches and tried to rid myself of my nervous behaviour in front of senior masters. I always behave in Common Room as if I were a small boy: I have never been able to eradicate the idea that these are _my_ masters whenever I meet them.

In my writings I am becoming too critical, but it is all rather superficial. I know that there are grave abuses in the Public School system, though the war swept away at least half of them; I also know that I have a reputation here of indulging quite indiscriminately in wholesale destructive diatribes: "the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up" as they say of me. I have not tempered my enthusiasm with reticence or bridled my tongue severely enough. The result is that I have divided the school into two great factions, the loyalists and the seceders. This is what my enemies lay to my charge. I cannot believe that my influence carries any weight at all. I am only a junior master and I don't mix with the boys here as I used to at Radchester for the simple reason that I live too far away from the school and that I have a wife. The only people who see much of the boys are the House-masters and the House tutors. The rest of us take a few sets, control, say, a debating or natural history society or choir, perhaps are responsible for a form, and there's an end of our influence. By bowling at the nets one meets a few others, in the Corps one comes across two Houses, and of course the school prefects are known to all the staff. But there is very little intimacy between boy and master, though such relations are as much encouraged here as they were discouraged at Radchester. A few of my closer friends come up to borrow books and stay and talk sometimes, others again come to hear the gramophone or to play the piano to me, but I have all too few friends among the boys. There have been one or two colossal rows this term, in spite of the fact that we are at war. Boy-nature seems to remain the same in spite of all--and not only boy-nature but adult nature, for even here members of Common Room fight one against the other like tigers when one man infringes on another man's rights. All these disputes have quite petty beginnings, but they assume alarming proportions in a very short space of time. I have been preaching about the dangers of over-athleticism. The consequence is that there is a blood-feud between those who worship at the shrine of games and those who think that games should be played merely as recreation. This has now become a question of Houses. There are Houses where everything is put second to games and others where games are put last. It is all rather comic because it really means nothing at all. The whole matter is always just personal. There are Houses with a tradition against taking the Corps seriously: there are others where they think of nothing else. One good sign I have noticed of late is the resuscitation of House Debating and Literary Societies. Boys debate among themselves on all sorts of school topics, internal politics; the spirit of criticism is abroad: boys are beginning to think, there is hope for them. There are, however, many masters who tell me that boys ought not to think: they ought to accept and not question, that to inculcate the carping spirit is a malicious practice. I wonder how much this is true. I stand and everyone knows it, for the cultivation of the æsthetic and the intellectual first, just because in the past they have been so despised. I am myself neither æsthetic nor intellectual but I have a craving after each. Athletics in themselves cannot satisfy the inner cravings of man: he wants more nourishment than that. I like to see the school magazine filled with good sound articles of general interest and poetry, as well as accounts of the term's doings.

I cannot see why the latter should oust the former any more than the former should supplant the latter. I want fair dealing. At present there is no fair dealing. Consequently some of the brighter spirits have produced magazines of their own, satirical, comic, serious, any and every sort as a counterblast to the school magazine. These illegitimate productions have a short life but a quite merry one. They create endless diversion owing to the fact that the satire is too carefully veiled for any but the very few to understand it; people are set guessing as to the possible authors, and there is always a rumour that the paper is about to be suppressed. They show a spark of humour, whereas the legitimate magazine is always deadly serious: when it aims at humour, as in its correspondence, it only succeeds in being ineffably tedious and dull.

_September 20, 1915_

We had a wonderful holiday in Scotland. We went via Edinburgh to Kingussie, which is in Strathspey, in full view of the Cairngorms; the scenery between Blair Atholl and Kingussie is magnificently rugged and grand. Kingussie itself is a fair-sized village of white-washed houses with two quite excellent hotels, both under the same management. We chose the cheaper and had the luck to have the run of the other. From the very first we made friends. By a strange chance two of the cheeriest and most typical of the best sort of Marltonians happened to be up there and we went for many excursions together, bathing in lochs and burns and climbing cairns.

Acting on my specialist's advice I began to take up golf and became immediately seized with a mania. Before we left I was playing thirty-six holes a day. The golf-course at Kingussie is right up the mountainside and is truly hazardous and sporting. There were crowds of visitors, all of them as merry as could be. Except for a few men in kilts and trains full of sailors passing through, one would never have believed that we were a nation at war. Every sort of person came and stayed at our hotel during the eight weeks that we were there, from Mr. Asquith and Mr. McKenna to the most astoundingly vulgar shopkeepers from Dundee and Glasgow. The wonderful fresh air soon brought colour to Elspeth's cheeks and she began to take exercise and climb some of the peaks near by with me: she also bathed with me in the Spey and sat and painted the blue hills while I wrote.

We made friends with the English chaplain and his wife, with the hotel proprietor who had amassed a wonderful collection of curios, with a peerless Marlborough boy whom I am never likely to forget, with a few convalescent officers and most of the residents. Never a day passed that was not full of enjoyment. The weeks passed all too quickly but I rapidly grew better and my nerves became quieter and my outlook on life less turbulent and queer. I owe my cure mainly to golf, which kept my thoughts off writing or the war.

I have had articles in most of the important reviews and in several of the weeklies. I find that I am being hailed as an educational expert and a literary critic, whereas in reality I am neither. I am a poor, rather demented creature with very high ideals and in my anxiety to see some of my ideas carried out I offend many good men, put myself into a false position and ruin myself in other people's estimation. I am over-enthusiastic. If I could only learn to go more slowly. It is the same old story about my mathematical teaching. I can't understand why a boy should not acquire the rudiments of mathematics quickly. I know that he could if he would only bestir himself. So if only the schools as a whole would bestir themselves, we should get boys interested in something more important than games. I go the wrong way to work. I haven't got the tact of a flea. As my first publisher said when I sent him the draft of my first novel, "This is too damned honest." That has been my failure through life. Instead of turning things over in my mind I just blurt out what I am thinking at the moment and get angry because every one doesn't straightway agree.

Elspeth and I spent a few days at Nairn in order to taste the sea breezes and I played golf with a Cambridge billiard Blue, who has now a post in the British Museum. Nairn is full of interesting people, but it is a strange anomaly of a place. In parts it is as hideous as Radchester, in others, as in the view across to Cromarty, it is exquisitely beautiful: the colours are soft and of every hue. I found this part of Scotland interesting from a literary point of view. There is certainly a touch of _Macbeth_ in Forres: and "Ossian" could only have been written by a man who knew Kingussie. I hope before I die that we shall once again have the chance to see Loch Laggan: I have never been more taken with a piece of scenery in my life. Laggan is like a miniature sea, set in between two beautifully shaped hills, ideally quiet, perfect for bathing and for rambling about on the moors. But it is too far out of the world for a man situated as I am now, who cannot bear to be out of touch with the latest movements. Laggan would be the place to go to worry out some new philosophy or to compose some wonderful new piece of music. I think I could write a novel there. But there must be no rumours of wars over the other side of the hill. In these days the heart pines for London and friends: it sounds ungrateful to say this, for Scotland did a great deal for me, and Elspeth and I both benefited enormously from our stay and were loath to go.

_December 31, 1915_

We determined to take in a paying guest this term: our Scottish tour cost us £100. Luckily we got an exceedingly interesting man, just down from Oxford, who has come here to take temporary work. He is a great historian and exceedingly keen on political economy. He began by being badly "ragged" by the boys and detested by his colleagues because of his rather new ideas and revolutionary principles: I came to like him very much. He entertained Elspeth and me a good deal. When he first arrived he was deadly serious, but we soon laughed him into a more equable state of mind: unfortunately for us he was conscripted although he was nearly blind, and so he had to go.

I have three times been up to the War Office to try to get out to the Front, but it is no good thinking of it till I am sane again. The last War Office official whom I saw sent me to the greatest brain specialist in London, and I now go up every week to be quietened down. He won't let me write more than is essential for my well-being, he tries to put me into an easy state of mind where I cease from troubling about anything. The idea is to get the nervous tissues to work evenly, not to get frayed and harassed by the millions of perplexing doubts and obsessions which flit across my mind. I am doing my best to act on his advice. It is all a question of whether my will is strong enough to impose a brake upon my mind, which is always showing signs of breaking loose from the necessary restraint that sanity demands. He tells me to enjoy life, not to take myself so seriously, to let things slide and adjust themselves.

In my frenzy to get things done, I overreach myself. I attack the deadly dullness of the countryside, I attack the abuses in a school curriculum. I even oppose the current morality of the age and instead of doing good I do active harm. I don't stop to think how my opinions will be construed.

I wish some of those who look on me as a dangerous innovator could see me in form. I am sure that no one could take exception to my statements there. My whole gospel is all of a piece. "Lukewarmness" is the unforgivable sin: one must be an active agent and ally oneself on the side of God or mammon. There is no halting between two opinions: if we accept (as we must) one or the other so must we fight for that side tooth and nail. The Holy Ghost, the Divine Spark, conscience, call it what you will that inspires men on to courageous, unselfish, heroic acts and thoughts, dies unless it is nurtured and carefully looked after. That is the lesson I impress on my boys in all the lessons where I get a chance of talking. On Sunday and Monday mornings I comment on all the books I have read during the week, drawing some lesson of life for their guidance. He only is the true teacher who is not afraid to teach, to explain the difficulties of life, his own shortcomings and attempts to find the light. One must be honest to deal fairly with boys.

I spend my time now in bicycling down to school after breakfast, teaching all the morning, writing articles all the afternoon with an occasional variant by walking down to the town with Elspeth, teaching from 4.15 to 6, and then coming home and writing until 10 and so to bed. In this way the days slip past at incredible speed. We seem to be in another world from the war: our only reminders are gigantic catastrophes, big successes, old boys returning scarred and maimed; telephonic communications plastered in the local bookseller's window, wounded soldiers, Belgian refugees, and occasional lectures. Common Room conversation has changed. The talk now during "break" is nearly always on the news of the day and very gloomy are the predictions made, especially by our older men, who are very hard hit by the horror of it and age perceptibly between one term and another. The debating societies flourish as they never did before, boys seem to be working harder, games are relegated to a secondary place in the estimation of the school and we seem to have settled down with grim determination to see it through.

I have lately been lecturing to the Girls' School and in London on Rupert Brooke. He is a poet exactly after my own heart. He is clever, witty, honest, and tries to find a meaning in life. He strains after Beauty but is not afraid of Ugliness: he is in love with the material, the tangible joys of life, but is not afraid of probing into the unseen world and guessing at what lies behind the darkness.

I have had the great good fortune to have two books published this autumn, one a school textbook, the other a series of sketches of English country life reprinted from the magazines. The sense of authorship gives me tremendous pleasure and the letters I get of adverse and commendatory criticism do me good. I would rather write a real book that mattered, something to inspire and cheer people up and show them a path through the labyrinth of life than anything else in the world. Pray God I may live long enough to do that.

The days of quarrels and struggles for supremacy between Elspeth and myself are over. She is extraordinarily patient with me and I do my level best not to give her cause for offence. When either of us shows signs of a relapse, the other immediately climbs down and gives in at once. I am as happy as it is possible for man to be. Some half-dozen boys come up to my house regularly and talk "bookish shop" and show up literary compositions of wonderful insight and value. I am making more and more friends in the school.

Coningsby is perhaps my closest friend: he is the Tony of Marlton: he chafes at the routine and rules and finds an avenue of escape in literature: he is also a born poet. He has a true sense of beauty and is learning to discipline himself by imitating the metres of all the older poets. I am trying to teach him the necessity of discipline, reticence and restraint in writing as in life, but I find it very hard owing to my own inability to conform in one or the other.

I take him with me to the University Extension Lectures on the modern poets and to the frequent concerts given in the town by Plunket Greene, Gervase Elwes, the London String Quartette, the Westminster Glee Singers and other celebrities that come down here.

One thing which has brought out the latent talent and interesting side of a number of boys has been a performance of _Twelfth Night_, which one of the House-masters got up in aid of charity. Boys love acting and to meet them day after day at rehearsals brought us all into much closer contact than we were before.

Boys think far more deeply than they used to. They grow much more quickly to maturity than they were wont. In one way one misses the careless irresponsibility: it kept one eternally young to be always with youth, but now, partly owing to the fact that all the senior boys work in the holidays in munition factories or on farms, the whole school is much more "grown up" in spite of the fact that the average age is much lower.

_January 17, 1916_

Elspeth and I spent Christmas in Bath and I tried to write without much success, so we decided to go to Bournemouth, where we stayed for three weeks and enjoyed every minute of it. By a strange chance we met at least half a dozen people who were with us in Scotland in the summer.

We walked about the cliffs trying to get strong and went to many entertainments and read a great many novels. We joined in at nights with the hotel people in their amusements, which did us both good and went a long way to remove the depression of the times.

I still go up to London every week to see my specialist. I am gradually getting quieter, though there are moments when my restlessness drives me to do crazy things. There are hardly any old Radcastrians of my time left. Two masters are back maimed for life, one armless, and the other without a right leg. The other young ones are all killed. Stapleton has given up his living and is working on a farm: Montague and Jimmy Haye keep on coming and going from and to France. Both have been wounded once, but they seem to bear charmed lives. They always spent some part of their leave with us at Marlton. They live for getting somewhere where it is really quiet and there is no reminder of the war.

_April 3, 1916_

It is strange to walk through the streets of Marlton and hear working-men talking of Salonika, Gallipoli, Mesopotamia, and India in the most casual way as if they were all villages within easy walking distances. The postmen, porters, and farm labourers are beginning to come back, having been invalided out of the services. All of them are full of wonderful exploits and make us poor stay-at-homes feel out of it and useless. The term has passed quietly. I have been told by the Head Master that my writings do not altogether please my colleagues, that I do not temper my enthusiasm with sufficient discretion or think long enough before I commit myself to a judgment. I have been too much obsessed with my theory that the intellectual and æsthetic faculties should be cultivated before the others to see the dangerous side of my tenets. I hate upsetting the masters here because some of them have been very long-suffering with my madness. I am certainly extremely unpopular because, like Feste, "I am comptible, even to the least sinister usage." Under my mask I am abnormally sensitive. I hate making enemies. I want to be every man's friend. I almost deceive myself into thinking that I am, then in an unguarded moment I flaunt an opinion which disgusts the conventional; in my horror of ignorance and dullness I make sweeping generalizations about people who live in the country and I somewhat naturally have the whole hive about my ears. Who am I, forsooth, to talk of ignorance and dullness? Why should I set myself up as a pinnacle of light? I don't: it's just because I am striving so hard to escape from the slough that I seek to drag out others with me, a foolish, quixotic act.

Elspeth and I have been amusing ourselves looking at all the vacant houses in the town to find somewhere larger: it is rather a good game going over other people's houses and comparing them with one's own.

We had a fortnight of deep snow and spent the time in tobogganing, which took me right back to boyhood's days. For that fortnight I was quite easy in my mind and irresponsible again, forgetful of the myriad worries that beset me. We find it very hard to keep going. I get agonies of apprehension just before each post comes in, wondering what manuscripts are going to be returned, hoping against hope that at last something will be accepted. If only I could get a series commissioned, I should be happy. It's a fiendish business thinking out subjects to amuse people, only to be turned down by one editor after another. I spend a small fortune in stamps alone. All the same I ought not to grumble: I make on an average about £100 a year by writing. When editors do pay, they pay handsomely, quite out of proportion to the trouble of writing the one article that finds acceptance. What stupefies me is the enormous drawer full of writings all sent back too often to submit again, or else topical and hence dead. I find that I can't write on the war. I want to be definitely literary or definitely educational. My colleagues dislike my doing the latter, and there is very little market for the former.

XVIII

_May 4, 1916_

We spent the Easter holidays near a munitions works in Essex and had our first taste of Zeppelins. I was acting in some amateur theatricals to amuse the workers in the factories, and while we were driving home afterwards immediately above us sailed gracefully along the grey cigar-shaped beautiful engine of destruction. The noise of the bursting shells and the bombs she dropped was terrific: but none of the people who live here seemed to worry at all. I was frightened considerably, but there was nothing to be done except go to bed, so we did. I don't care about seeing any more Zeppelins: it would take a considerable time for me to take them all as part of the day's work. I went over the factories and saw the whole business, from danger buildings to the most elementary innocuous part of the concern. It is a colossal undertaking and one that gives a man some slight inkling of the gigantic conflict in which we are engaged. The workers seemed all very cheery and were of all types, from parsons to bricklayers, domestic servants to duchesses.

We were staying with some extremely pleasant people. The daughter of the house, Sybil Grant, is to live with us for a term because she is unhappy at school. Her mother likes my system of education: the household is one of the best I have ever stayed in. They are all interested in modern movements, in poetry, science, ethics, everything pertaining to the intellect, and at the same time they are athletic. Like the people in "Mr. Britling" they play strenuous and humorous games of hockey every Sunday afternoon, recruiting from local Belgian refugees, service men at home on leave, nurses, and all the local girls for their sides. I have rarely enjoyed a holiday more. Yet even here the bad side of my character came out at times. I grew restless and morose some days and dashed off to London for no purpose except that I wanted to keep moving. The suburbs of London on the north-east side depress me frightfully. Coming back from Liverpool Street through Hackney Downs and Enfield is like going through the Inferno.

_June 25, 1916_

It is rather jolly having Sybil Grant in the house: she gives me a special human interest. It is the first time I have come into contact with an absolutely "slack" person. She disliked school because she could not get on with her work. I don't wonder. She is incapable of tackling any subject unless she loves it. She reads a great deal of poetry and likes writing it. But her art is quite formless. Like the boy Coningsby she always writes of sea-gulls and desolate cliffs. All her topics are as morbid as youthful topics always are: she delights in death-bed scenes and lonely suicides, deserted lovers, and murderers. In her way she is something of a mystic. She rather thinks that she is gifted with "second sight," which spoils her a good deal, because it leads her to imagine herself as a sort of divine prophetess. She makes many friends among the boys, which is good both for them and for herself.

I spend most of my time in being exceedingly rude to her and putting her down to work out mathematical problems, which she loathes. In spite of this, however, we understand one another pretty well and get on admirably. We have to-day had a great lunch at the Castle Hotel, two Sixth Form boys and two young but thoroughly intellectual masters. For two hours we sat and discussed educational ideals. Maltby is all for the many being sacrificed to the few: brains alone matter: he would have all games "bloods" disregarded entirely unless they were in the Sixth, but all members of the top forms privileged in every possible sort of way in order to act as an incentive to others to emulate them; intellectual and not athletic prowess is his creed, and of course I agree to a large extent. Our object is to show boys that nothing matters in comparison with the growth of the brain, that hard work leads to competence, honour, and a full understanding of life, and that nothing but hard work will bring out the best and most laudable faculties in man. In order to achieve this we should have to destroy the whole existing system, for the love of beef and muscle is at present ingrained in boys from their earliest years and hero-worship is apparently as rampant as ever it was. In my own small way I always try to instil into my boys the necessity to open and use all the brain-cells instead of just ten or twenty per cent, of them, but my influence alone doesn't count for much. We try to teach the lesson that games are only a recreation and not the serious business of life. I believe the attitude which boys adopt towards the Corps is the right one. They work hard enough at the book work, they try to become as efficient as possible on parade, but they revel in field-days. We have had two splendid ones this term. One day last week we marched down to Welham Heights and fought a great fight across the heather against heavy odds. It is a wonderful place. It was a very clear day and in the intervals of fighting we got a chance of taking in the beauties that lay before us, the winding valleys, the furze-clad downs, the distant white cliffs and the green of the open sea. Few of those who took part in this manœuvre will quickly forget the impression which this superb view of Sussex made on their minds. Such a day fills us all with renewed energies for our work: we fill our lungs with fresh air and our minds with fresh and invigorating thoughts: we go back to work revivified and full of determination. Incidentally we seem to get to know each other better. On the way home in the train we discuss all sorts of subjects nearest to our hearts, which we do not normally give voice to.

We have very much more chastened Speech Days in war time than we used to have. There is no cricket match, no prize-giving, no luncheon, only the Priory service is retained and to that is added the ever-lengthening list of Old Boys who have given their lives for England.

_July 12, 1916_

A red-letter day in the history of the family of Traherne. Elspeth gave birth to a daughter this afternoon at half-past one. For months past I have been trying to look after her in view of this great event, for the last weeks I have myself been in a state of frenzy lest anything should go wrong and I should lose her. To-day has been a ghastly ordeal. I had to spend most of it in school, which was a good thing, because it kept my mind from brooding. From nine to one I taught, speaking all the time, trying my hardest to concentrate on quadratic equations and Army English. I went up at lunch-time and was told to disappear till four o'clock. I went for miles on my bicycle seeing nothing, my mind a blank, except for one ever-recurring sentence: "O God! grant that it may be all right." I couldn't face the thought of her going under. Elspeth is the whole world to me. She has gradually weaned me from my love of schoolmastering and now I think of nothing at all but her. I went back at four and was told that everything was all right and that I was the father of a daughter. I thought of nothing but Elspeth's health and I was taken up to see her: she looked dreadfully frail and ill. I forgot the baby: I didn't even want to see her until I had seen Elspeth--then I was shown the wee morsel of humanity in its cot. Its cry sounded to me quite uncanny. It seemed so hard to realize that another life had entered the world since I was last in the house. Every one at the school has been up to congratulate me: hundreds of telegrams had to be dispatched, flowers and presents of all sorts began to arrive. I begin to feel really important, but the fact that I am a father will take a long time to realize. I had no idea how strung up I had been all the term before: the presence of a nurse in the house for the last week had worried me and kept me in a state of continual torture. The courage of a girl having to face such an ordeal in cold blood is positively wonderful. I only hope that she will quickly recover.

_August 1, 1916_

It has been a fortnight of great trial. Elspeth was left very weak and ill and is by no means well yet. She has had a very hard time. The infant is as good as gold and amazingly healthy. She cries very seldom. I had always imagined that children cried through the entire night, but this kid never cries at all: she is one big smile by day and contentedly sleepy at night. She is beautifully proportioned and has large blue eyes and regular features. I had always thought men rather fools who raved about their children's looks: all babies used to look alike to me. Now I know that there never was such a baby as mine: I look anxiously into "prams" along the road and compare the babies whom I see there with mine. I have managed to hide my affection for her from all the people who ask me silly questions. I'm not going to be classed with all the other fathers there ever were as a blind worshipper of my own child. Her hands and feet give me undiluted pleasure. It is amazing to watch her moving them about: her suppleness ought to be a sign of healthy activity in the future. Her head is small and splendidly proportioned. I hope she does not grow up a fool. She gives Elspeth a wonderful, never-ending interest in life: she thinks of nothing else. It is the best thing that could possibly have happened to her: we ought to have had a child at the very beginning. I am more proud of her than I dare acknowledge to any one except myself. I should like to write a book just jotting down her daily growth, her recognition of her mother, of the nurse, of me, of strangers, of things in a room. At present she loves looking at her hands and she keeps her thumb in her mouth most of the day and night. She has an extraordinary amount of individuality: unluckily, she is terribly frightened of any sudden noise. This must be inherited. I hope to Heaven that she does not inherit her father's dementia as well. At present she has got, I am told, exactly the expression of my eyes, the far-away, detached look varied by a piercing, questioning, quizzical gaze that so disconcerts strangers. Elspeth's mother is extraordinarily attached to her and would give her life for her: it is a joy to see the delight which the infant takes in her grandmother and vice versa.

We have christened her Prunella after my mother. I had the luck to get Tony down to the christening to be her godfather. Elspeth is going to spend the first part of the holidays in Bath while I take Tony for a walking tour in Devon and Cornwall during his convalescence. He has been wounded in both arms. He, like everybody else, thinks her perfect. I only hope that she will grow up loving us and finding us worthy of her love. We must try to make life easier for her than it has been for us.

_September 20, 1916_

Tony and I had a wonderful holiday together. Now that Elspeth has Prunella and her mother she is happy and I, for some strange reason, feel that I am leaving some part of myself behind with her in the person of the kid, so I did not feel the separation so acutely as I should otherwise have done.

I always return from a holiday in the West Country a different man. On this occasion as the result Tony wrote some wonderfully descriptive verses and three short stories, and I was inspired to begin my first novel. I am not satisfied with it, because as usual I have hurried through it far too quickly, my characterization is not sound, my protagonists have simply run away with me. I start off by meaning to say one thing and then end up by saying something quite different. I cannot visualize scenes accurately: I give a hazy, vague impression like a man who never keeps his eye on the object. I have often, for instance, tried since I have been at Marlton to describe the school, the Priory, or the town, but I have never succeeded in pleasing myself with the result. The town to me is just a cluster of beautiful old houses set in a picturesque valley flanked with wooded hills; the Priory which stands in the midst defies description. I know that when I get inside I gaze at the thin perpendicular pillars, the ornate ceiling, the many coloured stained-glass windows, the slender beauty of the whole, but I cannot get the impression it makes upon me into words: the school is simply an Oxford College with lime-trees in the quadrangle and latticed windows to its studies and no more. I can't paint what it looks like on a clear moonlight night, or when the lights shine through the rain on to the puddles in the main courts.... So it is with Devon and Cornwall: their very names ring in my ears like some magic phrase, but I can't explain the fascination these counties have for me.

It is all rather a tragedy for me, for a man who cannot see or describe accurately can scarcely expect to become a writer, and I am almost as keen to bring out a great book as I am to be a great schoolmaster. The tragedy lies even deeper, for I fail even in my calling. I want to be able to plant my finger on abuses and rid the world of them, and I find I am simply in my hurry destroying the wheat with the tares and bringing the whole edifice of education about my ears with no definite constructive theory about the rebuilding. I love boys but I don't attract many but the outcasts. During the time that I have been at Marlton I have only got to know at the outside a dozen intimately, and I don't know that my influence on these has been wholly good. I rouse in them a spirit of criticism and get them to refuse to believe anything until they have proved it for themselves. I have made enemies of practically all the staff, all of whom are better fellows than I am and do more good with less effort. I seem to be the Martha of my profession, cumbered about with too much serving, always thinking that I am the only one who is really working because I kick up such a fuss about it.

I seem to have been like this in everything that I have undertaken. When I was married, I considered that I was the only man who had ever had to learn by experience the laws that govern marriage, when Prunella was born I imagined myself to be the only father in the world. I suppose I do feel joys and miseries more acutely than most people. The smallest kindness shown me makes me almost worship the doer of it; the least hint of inimical criticism and I am up in arms in a moment and consider myself the most badly treated man on the face of the earth. It is awful to have to face oneself and write oneself down as self-centred, narrow, anarchical, selfish, and all the rest of it. At any rate those friends I have, have clung to me through thick and thin, and Elspeth has been a brick to stick to me as she has. I made her come up to town to see Tony before he went back to France and to buy some new clothes. I am so proud of her these days that I want to dress her smartly, give her none but the best things to wear, entertain her to all the amusements that are going. She loves London; the shops and restaurants and theatres all provide her with a never-failing source of interest. Besides which it is necessary to have a fling in the big world before we retire to our backwater at Marlton: it is all very well for me, but there is nothing for her to do there but tend Prunella.

_December 19, 1916_

This Christmas term has passed all too quickly. Elspeth has been wrapped up in Prunella and watches her growth with ever-increasing delight. I see the infant in the early morning and talk to her while I am shaving: she is now cutting teeth and doing her level best to talk. Her remarks at present consist of "Gug-gug-Da-da," and incomprehensible noises pitched high and low in the scale: she laughs like a grown-up person: she only cries when the piano is being played or the gramophone put on. She lies and kicks in her cot, her pram or arm-chair by the hour: she is quite contented crooning and laughing to herself. She wriggles her hands and toes about incessantly and is as bad as any animal about her bottle: her eyes dilate with fury if it is delayed, and with pleasure when it appears. Her interest in everything that goes on is positively comic: she is afraid of nothing except sudden noises and allows herself to be handled by any stranger. All the masters' wives love her: she must be really a beauty because every one is agreed about it. I think her eyes are lovely and her contentment is a thing to marvel at. The patience required for lying for months trying to learn to talk, with teeth slowly coming, hair slowly growing, strength gradually being built up, must be immense. Her intuition is perhaps the most noticeable thing about her: she knows when she is being "ragged," she knows somehow exactly what it is that people are trying to convey to her, and she answers any one's smile with a beautiful grin which is entirely her own. She is, however, a complete deterrent to work. I always want to be with her, to have her on my lap and pet her, but I curb my desires strictly. After all, I've got my writing to attend to, Sybil to teach, the boys' work to correct and games to referee. My novel appeared in the autumn and to my intense surprise went into a second edition almost at once: the critics were unanimous and loud in their praise, which astonished me, for it seemed to me to lack any kind of pretensions to style, clarity, cohesion, or even sense. None the less the writing of books is not a paying game. An article brings in quick returns, costs very little energy, and is not at all wearing to the nervous system. After finishing my first book I was a wreck.

Spurred on by the success of this I have already written another in imitation of the younger novelists of the day, in which I have portrayed a horrible character obsessed by sex: I don't quite know why: the writing of it affected me greatly and I am as limp as a rag now it is done, and want to burn it, but my publisher is delighted with it and wants to bring it out in the spring. For the sake of the money I suppose I must let it go. Fortune seems to be smiling on me. Another publisher has already made me sign contracts for two novels and a volume of my collected poems, so I have my work cut out in the near future to cope with the demand. Added to this, the best-known literary agent in the country has now approached me and asked me to let him place all my work. All the agents I have tried hitherto have failed me hopelessly, but it is an honour to have Harrod for an agent, I am told, so I have signed his agreement too. The only fly in the ointment is that there is a great scarcity of paper and trouble in the printing trade; still, people are reading books more than ever. I shall never forget the day when I first saw a book of mine in the window of a London book-shop. Fame (of a sort) I felt had at last reached me. Three years ago I should never have dreamt such a thing possible, and my little notoriety has already brought me great friends.

When the Christmas term is over we are to spend some days with quite a number of leading literary lights, to whose conversation I am looking forward. Common Room were incensed at my book because they thought that they detected pictures of themselves. I can't for the life of me think where, for the characters were all weaved entirely out of my own brain. Apparently some of the opinions I put into the mouths of my worst characters have been taken literally as my own, which is pernicious nonsense. I should have thought after all this time that most people here would know what ideals I stand for. As a matter of fact no one has lately taken much trouble to cultivate the acquaintance either of Elspeth or myself. They look on me as eccentric, they have not worried to sympathize with me over my troubles and I am afraid that they think that Elspeth does not want to know them because she goes out so seldom. We live very much to ourselves. It is hard to see how we could do otherwise when one realizes how we spend each day. I have to go on writing most of the time to earn our daily bread: we haven't a penny private means. We are not very economical, though we try hard to be so, and prices are steadily rising.

I have had one bit of luck, however. I have been appointed Examiner for the Oxford and Cambridge Locals in Mathematics and English, and though the work entails a good deal of drudgery, it also makes an appreciable difference to our income. Incidentally I very much like going through English essay and literature questions. I like to compare all the different methods of teaching English that obtain throughout the country.

The term has passed without incident: Sybil has learnt a good deal of history and written some excellent short stories. Boys come up to borrow books and to discuss problems that worry them. I have had no occasion to punish any boy for some time. Old Boys come back frequently and keep us reminded that after all there is a war on, which we are apt to forget when we have a petty feud of our own raging. I have refereed a good deal of "footer," and struggled hard to keep my platoon up to the mark. The only complaint I have about life is that the days are too short and I want to do far more than I can.

_January 19, 1917_

We spent a splendid holiday in London going from house to house of new friends and seeing for the first time how the artistic and literary section of London live. They are very different from the Marlton people: their codes are much less stringent, they are far more tolerant, they seem to get much more out of life. They are intensely interested in art, painting, sculpture, music, the drama, and all æsthetic delights. Elspeth was taken up at once by them: she has the sort of uncommon beauty that passes more or less without comment in Marlton but in London is looked upon with admiration. She seems much healthier and more vivacious in town: the life agrees with her. I spent some days with her at Bath and some quietly in St. John's Wood, writing for dear life at one of my new novels for Manson. The worst of novel-writing is that it gives one no time at all for articles and the money one derives from it does not come in for so long a time after. I am told that the book writer achieves a kudos which the mere short-story and article writer never gets. I doubt it, but it may be so. Anyway I doubt whether I shall write many books, the wastage of nervous tissue is too great. While I am at work on a subject I want to go on and on at lightning speed until I have finished, and when I have finished I am perilously near lunacy.

_February 10, 1917_