Only on Sunday nights, after a peculiarly good sermon and inspiring hymns, can one at all reach the mood in which it is possible to discuss quite openly with boys exactly what education means to you and ought to mean to them. Instead of rushing out of chapel and fighting for places at the sideboard in Common Room over the chicken and salmon, I go to my rooms and talk quietly to such boys as can get leave to come then. Most House-masters refuse to let their boys come to my rooms at all during lock-up. They think my influence is quite definitely pernicious and immoral. In other words I try to develop the imagination.
I have made friends during the last two or three weeks with Copplestone, who is a House-master of a very religious turn of mind. He dislikes corporal punishment and is hence looked upon as anæmic both by his boys and his colleagues. He reads (quaintly enough) nothing but Arnold Bennett. I go up to his rooms and talk by the hour about "The Old Wives' Tale," "Clayhanger," and "Hilda Lessways": he is rather a pitiable sort of man: he feels that he owes his allegiance to the old school, and yet he feels that we represent the humanitarian side of education. He is like Sir Thomas More, torn between his reason and emotion: like Sir Thomas More he is going to suffer for his ill-timed birth. Had he been born ten years earlier he would have been a whole-hearted upholder of l'ancien régime. Had he been born ten years later he would have been one of us and not cared a rap about the old men or tradition. His only course is to resign and become a village priest: he would be admirable with old ladies, and the younger members of his congregation would approve of him because of his love for Arnold Bennett. Here he behaves like Shelley's mother, alternately petting and spoiling his boys, punishing them out of all proportion to their offence at one moment, only to let them off and feed them extravagantly the next. The result is that no boy can tell what he is going to do. He is quite unreliable: he allows himself to be hopelessly "ragged" for two days and then flares up and half kills a quite inoffensive youngster who happens to cough.
I feel really sorry for him, for no one cares for him. He has successfully fallen between two stools and become despised by both the great opposing forces on the staff. He is neither new nor old, hot nor cold, and exactly fulfils that horrible prophecy of Ezekiel about being spewed out of the mouth of all parties.
Thank Heaven this term is over. I haven't learnt much more about my job: I have had some illusions shattered: I have luckily made a few more friends, but boys are queer—one is apt to offend them without in the least knowing why. I shouldn't care to spend my time, like Smithson, who lives for nothing but to curry favour with every boy he meets: he's as bad as the type of boy who always "sucks up" to masters, the very worst sort of creature. Smithson "treats" them all lavishly: he makes fun of the weaklings and the unpopular, he "toadies" to the prefects and generally makes a damned fool of himself. He doesn't see, poor devil, that popularity, like Fortune, is a fickle jade, and only pursues those who take no notice of her at all. Good God! Fancy becoming a schoolmaster in order to be popular!
May 4, 1911
This has been one of the best Easter holidays I can remember. Stapleton managed to get a month's sick leave from his curacy and we set off for Oxford and the Cotswolds, to try to regain something of the irresponsible gaiety of Oxford days. I had no idea how hateful the country round Radchester was until I got back to the City of Spires. It seemed impossible to believe that only two years ago I had still to take my Finals, that I was disporting myself on the upper river and the Cher, lazily enjoying all the sweets of life and now—well, I felt about a hundred years old at the end of last term. There was no beauty or interest anywhere or in anything, and then Stapleton wired for me—and since then life has been one all too short ecstasy. We stayed in Oxford just long enough to buy tobacco, a few books and some clothes, and then set out on foot to go over again some of the country we had learnt to love so well as undergraduates. Rucksacks on back, we climbed Cumnor Hill on a glorious spring morning and made our way down to Bablock Hythe and then kept along by the river for the rest of the day: we strolled languidly and talked rabidly about our scholastic and church experiences, our disappointments and successes. The air cleared our minds: we evolved great schemes of new schools and new religions, undefiled by effete traditions. Gradually the beauty of the meadows and the old-world villages made us forget our worries and we gave ourselves up to the enjoyment of the time. We travelled without map or guide and just wandered at will. When we saw an inn that we liked we stayed there, and ate and drank ourselves drowsy. At night-time, when the bar-parlours were closed and we had reluctantly to say good night to the labourers who came in and gave their views on world-politics, we used to read for a little, and then to a ten hours' sleep.
I had taken the "Note Books of Samuel Butler" as my pocket companion for this journey, and I never took a book which served its purpose so well. In compact paragraphs the philosopher sums up with amazing shrewdness, humour and insight into the human mind all that he discovered to be interesting or worth repeating. The "Note Books" are crammed with the cream of his thinking on every sort of subject, science, music, literature, religion, architecture, sheep-farming, authorship—everything that could possibly appeal to any thinking man. It is an invaluable book to argue about. Butler at least clears the brain more than any writer except Swift. He scatters pedagogy and all cant and humbug to the winds: just as the air of the Cotswolds scatters all thoughts of Radchester from one's mind, so does Samuel Butler fill it with new ideas and fresh weapons of thought.
Stapleton and I kept on discovering old Tudor houses with moats, and churches containing carved screens and tombs of Crusading Knights. We stayed for three days at an old mill at Tredington on the Fosse Way, miles from any town or station, and there heard the farmers sing all the old Gloucestershire folk-songs in the Wheatsheaf Inn.
This has been a wonderful holiday for me. I wonder how many men become schoolmasters simply in order to be able to have such good holidays. It is a great temptation to a man who cares nothing for education: he can submit to the routine all the better if he is indifferent and has no ideals. All he has to do is to sit tight for three months at a time; he is certainly not bound to exert himself very severely by the letter of his contract. Then come these golden weeks of lovely spring when he may disport himself as Stapleton and I have done, prying into unknown nooks and crannies of mediæval England, lazily wandering by hedgerow and riverside, gossiping over gates to farmers, reading to his heart's content on sunny beach or secluded meadow by day, or in the ingle-nook by night. He has no cares, no worries: his salary will pay for all these jaunts so long as he steers clear of London and big hotels. If the truth were told, I think that the reason why a number of men enter the profession is no more than the lure of possessing freedom for a quarter of their lives.
I wonder if this is how old "Jumbo" Stockton became a master. He is a most lovable fellow and quite content with life. He is associated with none of the school activities; he plays no games except golf; he is not in the corps (very few members of Common Room are); he never entertains boys in his rooms; he does very little work and is always ready for a chat or a walk at any hour of the day or night. He just purrs contentedly like a cat and rambles on about Vacs. that he has spent in the Ardennes or the Pyrenees, yachting round the coast of Scotland or caravaning in the New Forest. His one business in life seems to be the holidays; his rooms are filled with Baedekers, "Highways and Byways," and guides to every place under the sun. Of educational reform or ideals, in other words, of shop he never talks. Most of us talk of nothing else. Common Room conversation gets dreadfully oppressive at times owing to the continued debates about rules and the characters of endless boys. Stockton never enters into these controversies, consequently he is never at daggers drawn with any of us. We all affect to despise him, but secretly we are rather envious of his detachment. He seems quite popular with the boys, he finds that it pays to adopt a strict demeanour; his work is never shirked and he rarely has to punish any one. I sometimes wonder whether he does not feel a sudden pang when one of his old associates at Oxford comes to the front after years of struggling at the Bar, in politics, or the Church, and leaves him behind in the race of life. Yet I have never met a more contented man. He doesn't regard teaching as anything but a sinecure: his main occupation in life is travel. He is rather like a city clerk who goes up to his office every day solely in order to earn enough to take a holiday. The difference lies in the fact that Stockton gets his reward three times a year, the clerk only once; the master gets three months, the clerk (with luck) three weeks.