Christmas, 1910
As usual I have come home for Christmas: as usual I miss Radchester and my boys more than I can say. There is nothing to do here except visit the villagers, go for walks with my mother, and write letters.
I like the villagers best at our Christmas dances. They are more natural then, and sing and talk and play games and dance with utter abandon: they no longer suspect one of ulterior, hidden motives. They extend the right hand of fellowship and we all give ourselves up to whole-hearted enjoyment. They are all, young and old, content to be as children, innocent and friendly, actuated by no other motive than the giving and taking of pleasure. Would that they were always like this.
I have been getting up debates in the village institute this Christmas, and I have been surprised at the high level of intelligence displayed and the sincerity of the oratory of the few who speak. They were diffident at first, but soon warmed up as they got interested and we have always roused considerable warmth of feeling before we have finished the evening's entertainment.
What does distress me about village life is the education. I am almost certain that no education at all would be better than the present half-and-half system. To take away a boy or girl from school at thirteen or fourteen is criminal: children at that age have just been trained to want to know—and they are then taken away and the labour of years all undone by being pushed into mills, on to farms, or behind counters, where nothing but mechanical obedience and servility are required. They forget to read, they forget how to write, they have no interest in the things of the mind. It amazes me that they grow up at all with anything but animal instincts. Education in England, so far as the majority of the children go, is useless and will continue to be so until it is made compulsory that no boy or girl shall leave school before the age of sixteen or seventeen. You can't do much with mindless louts of eighteen with one hour's Bible lesson a week. If any one disbelieves this, let him try to coach a dozen villagers in amateur theatricals: I've tried it and I know. They are simply blocks of wood once you put them on a platform. The average Public School boy of fifteen is quite at home on the stage: your yokel of any age is simply stiff and lifeless, unable to be anybody but himself, charcoal his face never so deeply.
January 15, 1911
I have had a gay fortnight in the Potteries, staying with the Pasleys. Young Pasley is in Heatherington's house and in my form; his father is a tile manufacturer and fabulously wealthy. I found the whole family lovable. They live in a large house in the middle of grimy Hanley. They are real sons of the soil and proud of it. The father and mother speak broad Staffordshire, the three girls and the two boys as the result of Public School education are ultra-refined and are inclined to bully their parents, who, however, hold the whip-hand. They have high tea instead of dinner; they sit down soberly in the evening to hear Adela (who is fresh home from Dresden and is engaged to the local curate) play the violin. At ten Mrs. Pasley rises with, "Well, lads, it's time for bye-bye: I'll be sayin' good neet to you, Mester."
They delight in showing me over the warehouses. They love every inch of their hideous streets and proudly point out the excellence of their schools, their public baths, their shops and theatres; every one knows every one else. They almost bow the knee at the name of Wedgwood, they unaffectedly despise London. They know that the hub of the universe is to be found in the Five Towns. The exact income of every visitor to the house is known and talked about almost to the exclusion of every other topic. They read nothing at all; they genially regard me as a fool for wasting my brains at "school-teaching," as they call it, but they are genial and hospitable. Looking back on it, my visit seems to have been a long succession of feeding fowls, dancing, shopping, and looking at priceless china in the making.
I had one or two long talks with father Pasley on the subject of Public School education: he is not quite certain that he is getting his money's worth at Radchester.
"That lad of mine is not squeezing all he might out of yon school: I don't like throwing a hundred and twenty quid a year into the sea. You've got antique methods of learning a lad mathematics at your place, Mester, and I don't hold with ignorance; classics and such fal-lals is all right for parsons and the likes of you, but my lad's not going to be a parson nor a school-teacher neether: he's going into t' business and he knows it: he's going to have to earn his brass, same as I did mine. I don't believe in a lad being brought up soft with the notion as 'ow he's going to have a mint o' money at his fingers' ends to play the fool with. Pasley and Son's a firm as wants men as 'ev got some grit to 'em: I sends my boy to school to get grit—learn 'im that, Mester, and let the rest go."