I have now had my first taste of life as a master at Marlton. The air here is sluggish, warm and unhealthy. I never want to go out and I always feel tired. There is none of the energy which one associated with Radchester. The place is altogether different. In the first place there is practically no Common Room life, which is perhaps a good thing. We only gather in Common Room from 11 to 11.15 every morning for "break." The masters live all over the town. There are eight houses and each one is quite distinct from any other: the boys never mix. Most of the staff are quite young. Of the elder ones I have come across the officer commanding the Corps who is elderly (he has a son older than I am), a parson, very good-natured and easy-going, but with an insatiable desire for talking. He is the most gossipy man I ever met. His wife is one of the sweetest women I ever met. We have dined there once, but it was a dull meal. He monopolized the entire conversation. There is another House-master parson, also old, who is very literary and runs a select society, which meets every Sunday afternoon to read and listen to papers on literary topics. I should like to belong to that. Some day I hope to be elected. We have also dined there. Ponsonby is a wonderful raconteur but rather eccentric in his habits: I should think that he takes some knowing. The other House masters are all young and all married. Every one here seems very well off as compared with the Radchester masters. They all have private means. They ride, though not often, to hounds, they own cars and motor-bicycles, and don't appear to do very much work. Most of them live solely for games. I find that I am getting more and more agitated at the games fetish. Although they live under the shadow of the most inspiring church in the country, and though the school buildings themselves are exceedingly beautiful, the boys and masters alike seem to distrust beauty just as much as the Radchester people did. There is one man with whom I have formed a strong alliance. He, like myself, is a new-comer. He is unmarried, very clever, and deserted the Foreign Office, where he held a good billet, to come down to teach the Sixth. He is in the eyes of the school quite mad. He is careless as to his clothes, wearing next to nothing on a very cold day and arctically clad when it is warm and sunny. He has a knack of forgetting what time it is and sets out for a walk when he ought to be going into school. He is a real poet and a fine classic. His name is Wriothesley and is already known as "the Rotter." On Sundays he wears a top hat and immaculate morning clothes with a white slip, white spats and patent-leather boots. Added to this he stammers and is acutely nervous. The rest of the staff are not inspiring. There are several "beefy Blues," a few slack men who take no interest in anything that occurs in the school outside their form work, and one man who ought to be a country squire, who presides over the local District Council and spends all his energies on running the town. The boys are all gentlemen, very slack, very quiet, care nothing for work and a very great deal too much for "Rugger."
Unfortunately I have begun badly. Two articles that I wrote long ago on Public School Reform have just found their way into print. Every one here has read them and they all look on me as a dangerous innovator, unpatriotic and disloyal. It is in vain that I point out that I said these things of another school and under the stress of nerves. I am a marked man. Whatever I do I shall be looked upon with suspicion. They all think I am on the look-out for "copy." Elspeth does not much care for the school people and I don't altogether blame her. The wives are very cliquey, and think that they have a right to dictate to the wives of the younger masters exactly as to how they should dress, how they should behave, who they shall know and who they shall not know.
The society of Marlton is very snobbish and divided up into a myriad different sets. At the top there is the Castle clique, who hunt and play polo. Some of these are quite amusing. Then come the school people, who keep to themselves. After them come the professional clique. There are vast numbers of retired Indian military and civilian people, who play bridge and walk about the country doing nothing in particular: to these are attached the doctors, bankers, solicitors, and clergy. Next come the wealthier tradespeople and the other school people. Marlton boasts half a dozen different schools to meet the demands of people of widely differing ideas, Roman Catholic, Secondary, Girls' Colleges, Board, Grammar and National Schools: the place is overrun with educational establishments. There is consequently no dearth of people, though the total population is certainly not more than ten thousand.
My work is not very arduous and gives me time to write in my spare hours. I only hope that I shall have the sense to avail myself of it. I take mathematical sets all through the school: the boys seem to know even less than they did at Radchester. Certainly they know no English. I find to my intense disgust that I am and have been for the past ten years suffering from chronic appendicitis. There is no need as yet for an operation, but I have to be dieted very carefully and avoid games. A much more insidious disease is attacking my brain. I am beginning to get restive. I haven't the least idea why. I want to get up and run away. It is all too comfortable. I am afraid of acquiescing and becoming as my colleagues, happy as sheep are happy basking in the sun. I never had this before: it's a new development. I go for miles on my bicycle and sit on stiles or hedges and read or gaze out over the landscape and wish—I scarcely know for what. I have lately been rereading all Thomas Hardy's novels. I seem to be a sort of second Jude the Obscure.
The hours are very different from those at Radchester. We have breakfast at 8.30. Chapel (which we only have to attend once a day) is at 9.15, and then school goes on from 9.30 to 12.45. At one o'clock we lunch and Elspeth and I walk down to the town to shop or change a library book at the station, getting back for tea at four. School continues from 4.15 to 6. Then work is over for the day. There is no preparation invigilation for masters, thank God. In the evening after dinner I do a little correcting, not more than is necessary, write if I feel like it, read a chapter or two of a novel, and so to bed at ten. The days pass very quickly and I don't seem to do anything. I am achieving nothing. Most of the day seems to be spent in riding to and from school. I've been reading D. H. Lawrence's novel, "Sons and Lovers." It's about as perfect a picture of Midland life as could well be imagined. Thank Heaven that I'm back in a county among people who hunt and talk the King's English. I have a great deal to be thankful for. It seems a very Elysium of quiet content and happiness, and yet there is underlying tragedy.
The first Monday in October is made an occasion for an annual orgie which rouses the town out of sleep. I have just come from partaking of all the fun of the fair. It starts on the Sunday night, when all the riff-raff of the place march through the streets making a fearful din with drums and kettles and tin cans and whistles, to celebrate the completion of the building of the Priory. The day after is given up to revelry of a rather gross kind. Booths are erected in the main narrow street and all sorts of useless things are bought and sold. On the fair ground there are roundabouts and swings, cinema shows and helter-skelters, houp-las and side shows, rifle ranges and coco-nut shies. It is all very tawdry and shallow and noisy and cheap, but it gives one a glimpse of Hodge at play which is instructive.
Compared with the north-countryman he is feckless, very subservient, slow and deliberate in his movements, content with his potato-patch and fourteen shillings a week as wages, afraid of his superiors (the north-countryman has no superiors) and in all things seems to be a relic of the feudal system. He takes his pleasures very sadly and is frequently drunk; he finds life monotonous but he is not ambitious enough to cast off his slough; in Marlton he was born and in Marlton he will be buried and that is his life history. There are as a consequence a great number of workhouse inmates, semi-lunatic boys and girls who loiter about the streets all day: the shops are very poor and the attendants slow beyond belief. No one here seems to have any conception of the value of time.
The boys at the school have the same lazy habits in a lesser degree: they rarely run, they amble along through life very happily. They are genial but by no means effusive. The lack of wild enthusiasms, frequent riots, strenuous friendships and enmities is one of the glaring points about Marlton when I come to compare it with Radchester. After a few weeks Elspeth and I felt so bedraggled and worn out owing to the enervating climate that we took a few half-holidays down by the sea.
What a joy it is to be working in so exquisite a country. The drive over the downs, through the pine-woods, down to the rocky coast puts fresh blood into one. I want to sing for the very joy of being able to appreciate it. Nature is beginning to mean very much more to me than she ever used to. I go up sometimes (when I am fretful and inclined to chafe at the prison bars) to the golf-course, and then gaze over the northern vale, and the Kentish Weald, the white cottages nestling under the hills, the spires of many churches, and a great peace descends on me. I begin to realize the meaning of that word "England" and all that it connotes. If I hadn't been in the wilderness for four years I should probably never have felt quite such a thrill of thankfulness at the beauty of it. These south-country people as a rule take it all as a matter of course: they have lived here always: they have never seen Halifax or Huddersfield or Leeds or Radchester. They don't know the ghastly depression that sinks into one's soul after a month of gloomy, sunless days in a foggy, poisonous, manufacturing town.
One of the quaintest changes in my life is that now I find that I want to write. I keep getting fresh ideas daily. At present I am engaged in editing an "Anthology of Verse and Prose for Schools," which isn't anything like so dull as it sounds.