I suppose it is an ineradicable trait in human nature to want to be where one is not: when I was at home I longed for Radchester: now that I am safely back in my own rooms I miss the civilization of home, the constant presence of the other sex, the beauties of our moors and combes. This is really a very savage, uncouth sort of place: at present we are snow-bound, which seems to cut us off more than ever from the outside world. I should hate to be ill here: the school doctor is, I imagine, capable within limits, but there is no chance of securing any kind of adequate nursing or home comforts. We are in very truth a colony of Spartans. I find that I am hankering after the flesh-pots. I want to see Vera Buckley again. I must write and fix up a dinner and a theatre with her. I suppose if the Head Master found out I should be ignominiously "sacked." Yet I can't see that such conduct can really affect my status here. I don't propose to have her to tea in my rooms. She amuses me and I amuse her. She lives in a world poles apart from the one in which I live: she is a wonderful tonic after Common Room; her talk is all of gaiety and the different sorts of men she meets, pretty frocks and romance. By her side I feel amazingly old and dull and careworn: she is really my sole link with the workaday world outside. There is no chance of our friendship ripening into anything else: I fail to see where the harm or the danger lies; we like one another: we do each other good. As she so frequently tells me, I am different from all the other "boys." I don't make love to her or any nonsense of that sort; she acts as a refining influence on me. After parting from her I feel less of a boor, more of a man of the world.
I suppose in every profession there are points of routine and minute details that have to be observed that yet offend the new-comer's sensibilities, but I doubt whether anything so utterly devoid of purpose or so calculated to rub a man up the wrong way could ever have been devised to compare with a masters' meeting.
At the beginning of term we all assemble in Common Room and the Head Master reads out a list of proposed changes in the curriculum, which as a rule affect but two men out of the thirty or forty gathered round the table: the pros and cons of the changes are, however, heatedly discussed by the parties concerned, while the rest of us yawn and eat our heads off with boredom.
If, however, I or any junior member of the staff should have the effrontery to propose any alteration or reform, a storm of abuse immediately bursts on our heads and we are met with a final retort which is meant to quash us for all time: "The existing system has been in vogue for twenty-five years and no one has seen fit to question it before: it has become hallowed with the passing of time and it would be a sacrilege to tamper with it now."
Another feature of these meetings is the way in which each head of a department fights for his own hand. The choirmaster thinks of nothing but getting more time for choir practice, the officer commanding the corps strenuously tries to procure an extra five minutes at each end for his parades, the gymnasium expert urges the necessity of physical training in school hours, the modern language master vainly begs for less classics, the mathematicians for more hours devoted to preparation, the games manager for less school work for the teams, and so on.
A stranger would guess (and he would not be far wrong) at the end of one of these meetings that we were all deadly enemies, each suspicious of the other and certain in his own mind that he alone among the many suppliants has been treated with great unfairness and that the school is rapidly going to the dogs because he has not obtained his request. The irony of the situation is heightened by the fact that we pray both before and after the meeting that we may all work in complete harmony for the common good of the boys, whereas in reality we are all as disunited as any body of men could possibly be.
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."