January 13, 1914
Elspeth is now with me at my father's home and in bed with "flu." While we were there I got an invitation from Gregson's to write a book for them on education, so Elspeth and I went straight down to Bath, and I shut myself and wrote "Reform in Education" in ten days. It amounts to 50,000 words. I find that I simply cannot write slowly. I start to plan a thing out, then my brain refuses to take in anything except matter for the book. I look on meals as a needless interruption. I want to write all day and all night. The MSS. is now being typed for me, and I am resting, by reading novels and magazines, playing bridge and billiards with my father-in-law, and alternately quarrelling and making it up with Elspeth.
March 3, 1914
There have been endless rows in the school this term and wholesale expulsions. House-masters are told all about them, and the rest of us kept in ignorance. What the whole body of the school knows is hidden from us poor juniors. On what principle I wonder? Elspeth and I fight daily over books. She dislikes any papers, magazines or books in the drawing-room, and I hate to see the best room in the house given over to nothing but clothes in the making. Having sold under compulsion all the books that I so much valued I am now trying to build up another library. This naturally costs money, but, as I frequently tell Elspeth, I can't get ideas to write about unless I read a good deal.
My neurasthenia has been so acute lately that I have had to see the school doctor: he wants me to go into a sort of retreat for the Easter holidays alone. I'd far rather die. Because I attended every debate and dramatic reading at the School Debating Society last term I have been elected president. We have had debates on conscription, Lloyd George, and classical and modern subjects. I have brought up the average attendance from forty to about a hundred. I shall not be content until we get the majority of the school to attend. These debates, etc., take place in Big School on alternate Saturday evenings from 7 till 8.45. That means dinner at 6.30, which precludes the possibility of many members of Common Room attending. When I first began to go the meetings were rather disorderly and riotous, and no one cared much about the subject. There were long and awkward pauses, but now we have managed to rouse a good deal of opposition, and people come with very carefully prepared speeches, and there are less irrelevancies. I have had one severe attack of appendicitis, but it passed off after a few hours. Of course the school has had the usual diseases, mumps and diphtheria. The whole town is down with the latter: it is said that the water is bad, the milk is bad, and the sanitary arrangements mediæval. It is really the most backward, sleepy place I ever came across. The District Council fight among themselves, but never do anything for the public weal. Most of the members are drapers, butchers, and bakers, and consider nothing but their own interests.
I have been elected to the Sunday Afternoon Literary Society. There are eight boy members and eight masters. We meet at 3.15 on alternate Sunday afternoons, and a paper is read for an hour, and afterwards there is tea. This society has been in existence for fifty years. There is never any discussion, which is a great pity. At the end of term a Shakespeare play is read.
The first papers I heard were on "The Schoolmaster in Literature," Francis Thompson and Kipling, and they were all extremely interesting. Elspeth and I have dined with various members of the staff. They give good dinners, but the conversation is not very thrilling; they dislike anything out of the ordinary; they "never get the time to read," and consequently won't talk "book-shop," which I am beginning to fear is my only subject. They disapprove of my beagling because it takes me away from the games; they don't know, of course, that I've been forbidden to play games. As a matter of fact, I frequently referee the "kids'" games, which are really amusing. They have a quaint habit here of playing all their school matches in the Christmas term, and all their House matches this term. Ingleby, who runs the games, is a passionate devotee of "Rugger," and puts the fear of God into every boy who comes near him. He is altogether delightful, and has a most charming wife, but he cannot brook being "crossed." He dislikes and distrusts me because I said somewhere that I thought games were overdone at the Public Schools. His belief is that games have been, and are, the saving of England, the one outstanding glory of our national life. To this idea he clings through thick and thin, and opposition to it only rouses him to fury. He has a strong face, and is one of the giants here. His influence is enormous. He is an ideal schoolmaster of the old swashbuckling type; he rules by fear and the rod; all his boys love him almost as much as they dread him; he always looks as if he were going to knock any man down who ventured to disagree with him. I like him, but the devil that is in me always prompts me to get up against him; he is a great stickler for convention; the first time we crossed swords was on a very minute point of etiquette. A boy in his House, who is taking the Army exam., wanted special coaching in English, and so, not being able to find any classroom vacant in which to take him I agreed to visit him in his study. Of course I ought to have asked Ingleby's leave. I forgot, and he got furiously angry. "Young upstarts disregarding rules of a thousand years' growth," and so on.
I like my Army class work. The English required for Sandhurst and Woolwich is of a very low standard, but it is amusing. These general questions, précis, reproductions, and so on, give me a chance of introducing favourite passages from great authors, and I try my hardest to make them read for themselves by running a sort of library in my classroom. I fill up all my vacant shelves with "likely" books, and just let them help themselves. The worst of it is that they nearly always forget to bring them back. I find this as expensive a hobby as having boys continually to tea at Radchester used to be.
My other English form are preparing for the London Matriculation, which, as things stand, is the best examination in English that I know. I concentrate all my powers on literature. I try to build up a coherent idea of the history of English literature all through, and most of the boys respond to the idea splendidly. The worst of it is that they come to me, for the most part, desperately ignorant; three or four plays of Shakespeare, and Sheridan and Goldsmith comprise their whole stock of knowledge. On the other hand, there is a handsome prize awarded annually (£20 worth of books), called the "Carfax," for the boy who shows the best knowledge on Shakespeare, three set authors, and a general paper on all the best authors from 1800 to the present time. This stimulates the senior boys, and in this, the Lent term, every year, some twenty or thirty boys really try to make up for the lamentable deficiency in this branch of their education.