One of our men preaching last Sunday even ventured to read an extract from "Romola," in the pulpit, but apologized profoundly for so doing and damned poor George Eliot with faint praise by saying, "She was not a bad woman."
There have been a number of feuds in Common Room lately which have reminded me of the umbrella episode in "Mr. Perrin and Mr. Traill."
Young Rowntree who joined us this term has a brother in the army who happens to be stationed close by: he had him over to dinner one night last week and brought in some "fizz" to liven things up a bit. He sits, of course, at the bottom of the junior table, not very far from me. Not wishing to appear niggardly to the rest of us he brought in three bottles in order to pass them round to those who sat near him. We had a quite riotous orgie and for the first time since I have been at Radchester the junior table quite drowned the senior both in laughter and conversation.
It really was funny to watch the white drawn faces of the water drinkers of the top table, with the one syphon of seltzer as relief, while we, upstarts of a new age, were regaling ourselves with Pommery. There was a fearful row about it afterwards. Rowntree was written to by half the staff (who had not tasted the champagne) about the etiquette with regard to visitors. It was only by courtesy of the senior members that junior masters were allowed to invite visitors at all: it was taken for granted that if such a privilege were extended juniors would not abuse it by drinking anything but water. There was a battle royal. Rowntree is young enough not to give in without a struggle: during the last week he has taken in a bottle of some sort to dinner every night. He is the kind of man who won't be kept longer than a term. He "rags" his form and incites them to "rag" him and everybody else. He refuses to take Radchester seriously: he walks across the prefect's lawn (an unpardonable offence for a master), he walks about arm-in-arm with the boys in his form if he likes them; he swears quite openly and fluently in Common Room, he takes away the papers so that he can read them comfortably in his own room and forgets to return them, he even smokes cigars in the masters' reading-room. The old men can do nothing with him: he is impervious to black looks and misunderstands rebukes. He cuts every other chapel and usually forgets to take "prep." or "roll." On "halves" he always goes away, sometimes as far afield as Leeds or York on his motor-bicycle, and does not arrive home till two or three the next morning. He wears bright ties, silk socks, soft collars, and very well-fitting light clothes, totally regardless of the convention which demands black from boy and master alike. He is a very disturbing factor in Common Room and every one is moving Heaven and Earth to have him "sacked." What worries me about him is his ability: he writes with considerable success. He confessed to me one day that he only meant to stay one term: "I want copy for a novel I have in my mind—these old fossils with their moth-eaten, stereotyped conservatism give me a grand field. I guess this is just the best Public School in the country for my purpose, but my hat, I shouldn't care to have to stick at it for a year. It's funny to think that you all were alive once as undergraduates."
He read a chapter or two of his book to me the other day: he's got the spirit of the place exactly. I wish I had his gift. He sees everything and has the power of sifting his evidence with wonderful accuracy: he misses nothing.
Since he came I have given up my Sunday walks with Renton, who talks of nothing but dyspepsia and his own powers of teaching, and have accompanied Rowntree on some of his excursions on his motor-bicycle. We lunch in Scarborough and get into conversation with week-enders. Rowntree looks on all humanity as "copy," and is without any sense of modesty. He picks up loungers in hotel bars, girls behind counters, girls on the pier, tramps, hotel porters, "nuts" in the hotel lounge and all sorts of unexpected people. He always gets some fantastic story out of them: he is as good a story-teller as George Borrow and just as great a liar. His imagination combined with his experience make him a rare raconteur. He doesn't buy many books, but he is not averse from borrowing mine. I only regret that I can never get them back; he is quite shameless in the matter of purloining literature: he takes books out of the school library without "entering them" and soon begins to think that they really belong to him. He reminds me a good deal of a boy called Senhouse who is also unable to bow the knee in the house of Rimmon; he conforms to none of the school regulations and how he has escaped expulsion up to now beats me. At present he is raising for himself untold trouble by making friends with a small boy called Gillman in Hallows' house. He is desperately fond of this child, and waxes quite sentimental over him to me. There is no harm in either of them, and they are as open as the day in their relations with one another: they wait for each other after chapel, hall, and school. They go for long walks together, they contrive to sit together at school lectures and in prep. Hallows and Heatherington have each lectured both of them, and Hallows has caned Gillman frequently, but they refuse to give up the friendship.... Common Room is as usual in a frenzy over it and I have been reported to the Head Master for aiding and abetting them in their scandalous defiance of rules by having them to tea together in my rooms.
In my defence I mentioned that boys came and went just as they pleased in my rooms and that I couldn't very well prohibit any one of them at any special time. I also pointed out that I failed to see where the harm lay in this particular case of Damon and Pythias, that such a friendship might well be the saving of Senhouse, who is naturally inclined to be wild and restless. Like Rowntree, he has a habit of cutting chapel, prep., school, games, and everything that is compulsory, whenever he feels like it. He always takes his punishments without a murmur, but he likes to feel that he can escape from the routine when it bears on him too harshly: there is no speck of harm in his composition, any more than there is in Rowntree, but no one here could ever understand the point of view of either of them. Meanwhile the storm rages and Gillman and Senhouse continue to meet, while Hallows grinds his teeth in impotent anger. All the same the iron system will prevail in the end, routine always has the last word: they will both be expelled for continued disobedience of school rules, though nothing criminal can be proved against them. A boy's love for another boy is a pretty strong thing: it can withstand ridicule, punishment, and any weapon that authority can bring to bear against it in the case of such a faithful pair as these two. I cannot see what useful purpose can be served by these iron rules, which allow of no exceptions; that, normally speaking, it is better for boys not to make friends outside their own Houses, and not to encourage friendships in which there is any disparity of age is perhaps open to question, but at any rate strong arguments can be adduced in support of it—but when it comes to a piece of wanton cruelty like this, the whole business becomes silly. I have aired this opinion in Common Room to the no little indignation of all the staff. It is a relief to get back to the seclusion of my room and my books after all the riots, alarums and excursions of these school rows. I wish we could learn to pull together instead of squabbling like a pack of gutter children. I suppose I ought to keep quiet myself if I wished this consummation so devoutly, but I cannot stand by and see all my ideals smashed without remonstrating.
It is a mistake to herd thirty or forty men together for meals and companionship for three months on end: we ought to have our lives sweetened by marriage. Yet I suppose that married life would take off the edge of our keenness for our work: we should have domestic interests which would prevent us from devoting ourselves whole-heartedly to our work. Sometimes I find myself dreaming and pining for the life-companionship of some girl who would understand me and soothe my ruffled senses after a Common Room fight. Yet I suppose marriage fetters one: the married man is bound hand and foot, and can no longer set out on great adventures. He has given hostages to fortune and must be content to play for safety for the rest of his life. I can't see myself doing that. I want to be free as the air, free to play games, free to say what I like and risk being "sacked" if I offend. Yet I wonder sometimes, like Charles Lamb, what my children would be like. It would be splendid to perpetuate my name, to see another generation carrying on the work I have begun. There are so many changes to be wrought in education. We live in an age of pioneers: we are no longer content merely to accept the traditions of our fathers. We want to better their methods and results: we learn by the mistakes of our forbears. The Head Master hates this view. His idea is that only through experience can a man really teach, therefore we should accept the tenets which our elders hold and abide faithfully by them.
April 3, 1911
I have been of late reading numbers of books on education. The days of Thring and Arnold are over; instead of two textbooks on the theory, there are now two hundred or two thousand. Every day sees some new thesis appear hot from the press. People are beginning to take an interest in what is, after all, the most important department in the State. In all of these books I find the same points raised. As at present practised, education does not teach the younger generation to love the beautiful or the intellectual: without such a love all education is worth nothing. How to attain these affections is the next question. One man advocates the abolition of examinations, another the substitution of any method rather than that of rewards and punishments, another sees salvation in the teaching of English literature, geography and history, to the exclusion of the classics, and the cutting down of mathematics—but somehow I can't make much of these books on theory. I make marginal notes, underline passages, copy out good advice and I try to put what I believe to be practicable into practice, but on the whole I am left somewhat cold. I am on the search for a rich mine and, although I often feel that I am near it, I never quite succeed in doing more than unearthing one precious morsel of ore. In some ways the Head Master was right when he told me to read no books on education. He was right because I find nothing really new there. I am told to foster a boy's imagination: I spend all my time in trying to do this, and should do so even if I had read nothing whatever about education.