May 5, 1914
I find that I am getting slack in writing up my diary. I don't quite know the reason unless it is that "happy is the nation that has no history" applies equally to individuals. Elspeth and I are getting on much better, by fits and starts. We still quarrel, but more rarely, and only when I forget to show her some of those "little, unremembered acts of kindness and of love" which make so great a difference to life. We had one wonderful day at the Oxford and Cambridge Sports, when I introduced her to all the old Oxford gang. She was thoroughly in her element there. She was not born to be a schoolmaster's wife. She needs gaiety, amusement, heaps of friends, and an incessant round of youthful pleasures. I wish I could get a job in London if only for her sake. She gets very tired of the everlasting topics of conversation at Marlton, bulbs and babies. All true Marltonians are keen gardeners, and they all have large families. I suppose four years of Radchester made me forget the joys of a garden ... because really the gardens of Marlton are a joy for ever; apparently the very rarest and most delicate flowers will bloom in Marlton when they would die in any other soil in England.
As soon as the holidays started Elspeth and I went to London in order that I might continue to bombard the editors and publishers with copy. There wasn't much doing, but we saw numbers of quite excellent plays. I received a commission from Goddard's to edit a dozen plays of Shakespeare and other dramatists for use in schools, for which they promised me £50. I didn't spend as much time over them as I could have wished. My old disease of hurry made me write Introductions which I ought to have done much better, but my object was to say as little as possible and not to overburden the juvenile mind with a million unnecessary notes. It was an easily earned £50. I finished my anthology, which I called "A Cluster of Grapes," and started to produce a School Mathematical Course, which I eventually gave up because it bored me.
Elspeth and I went as usual to the point-to-point meetings this year, and the Bath dances, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. There are still the same old cliques to be seen parading up and down Milsom Street, weaving petty scandals over the tea-table at Fortt's, girls becoming engaged and breaking it off, strange, unaccountable weddings and stranger divorces. We are now looked upon as an old married couple and no longer interesting.
July 14, 1914
This has been a good summer term; it was pleasant to come farther south at the beginning of May instead of having to cut oneself off from all the joys of summer by going to Radchester. Marlton in the summer is exquisite: the town is just one blaze of colour: it is much too hot, but luckily Elspeth loves the heat, and I don't mind it much. Besides there is splendid bathing in the open-air school swimming-bath. Financial affairs have been a constant thorn in my flesh. Here I get £200, and on that I have to keep Elspeth, and a servant at £18 a year, a house the rent of which is £35 and the taxes £15. I give her £2 a week on which to keep house, and we spend money like water by travelling in the holidays. Worst of all I am still paying off old Oxford debts, which drag us down still further, and my books and tobacco bill average about £3 a term. All the other masters have private means and live like princes. I suppose we ought to economize by having no people to stay with us, but it would be deadly for Elspeth while I was in school if she was always alone, and I, too, like old friends to talk to at night. Consequently we are never free from visitors. Her father and mother and brothers and sisters have all been down, and several old Radcastrians, including Jimmy Haye and Montague, both of whom love it.
I have had the luck to get Tony's first forty poems, that he showed up to me for work at Radchester, printed in a monthly review. I am now waiting to be operated on for appendicitis. I am going into the nursing home on the 27th, as soon as ever I have finished correcting all my exams. I am funking it horribly. It would be dreadful if this were to be the end before I've really come to understand Elspeth and treat her as she ought to be treated. I do so want also to write something worth writing before I die. It's no good being morbid over it. I only hope that the taking out of this offending member will mean the eradication of all uncleanness and offence in me. It ought to make me better tempered, more long-suffering, more loving and lovable, and altogether more Christian and chivalrous. I read a paper to the Sunday Afternoon Society on "The Predecessors of Shakespeare"; as usual I prepared it too hastily. I had far too much to say to get through it in an hour. Before I knew about my operation I had accepted an invitation to lecture at Stratford-on-Avon on the teaching of English. These summer conferences are extraordinarily good things, and one learns heaps of "tips" about how to tackle a subject in the proper way. I still go on experimenting with my form. I have no reason to be displeased with their progress in literature. I have had quite a number of original pieces of work shown up. I have got to know two boys in particular very well. Every week they read papers to me on any subject, and we sit round a schoolhouse study table and argue. They are as different as possible from each other. One is a brusque, quite clever, very athletic lover of sensuous poetry; he pins his faith to Byron, Swinburne, Rossetti, William Morris, Edward Dowson, and Arthur Symons; his name is O'Dowd. The other, Raynes, is a quiet, demure scholar, who does not get on very well in his House; his passion is Meredith. I get more pleasure out of these two than out of any other boys in the school. By far the rottenest thing I have to do is private tuition. This means taking two or three very backward boys, usually in mathematics, for an hour three times a week. For this we get extra pay, £2 2s. for each boy! That is six guineas for thirty-nine hours' work. Whereas I have before now got six guineas for an article which hasn't taken me more than thirty-nine minutes. I grudge the time I have to devote to these boys more than I can say; they know nothing, they never will know anything, they don't want to know anything. And yet one can't refuse to take them because every penny is important.
We have one great function here in the summer term before which everything else fades, and that is Speech Day. This consists of a wonderful service in the Priory, then we go to Big School, where prizewinners read their papers, prizes are awarded, and speeches are made and large luncheon-parties are given in each House-master's house. The vast concourse then wanders slowly down to the fields to watch the old boys' cricket match, and at night there is a school concert. The music here is world-famous. The school concerts are magnificently done. We have a large album of school songs, and selections are taken from these, and there is usually some oratorio or cantata. The festivities leave one slightly limp, and there is not much work done during the rest of the term. The most surprising feature about it all to me was the comparison between the Radchester Speech Day and the Marlton Speech Day. The Radchester parent was a sight for the gods; he was always wealthy, nearly always possessed of a distinct accent, and wore clothes to match; he was hearty, bluff, and a good fellow; his womenfolk gave me no pleasure. At Marlton the parents seemed to be the salt of the earth; they were all aristocrats in name if not in money. The majority of them are parsons and soldiers, and practically to a man old Marltonians. Loyalty to his school is the one shining characteristic of the Marltonian; to them there is simply no other Public School in England. I don't wonder; the boys are perfectly happy. They live secluded from the rotten side of the world in a valley which takes the breath away for sheer loveliness. They have a great tradition extending from the dark ages. There is a saying that no matter where he is or in what circumstances an old Marltonian can be detected at once by his geniality, his good-breeding, his entire absence of "side," and soft, slow, lazy way of speaking. Quietly and insidiously the place is beginning to take hold of me. There is no doubt whatever that I enjoy life much more than I used to; I am beginning to observe beautiful things, nature particularly. I find myself standing stock-still looking at the clouds racing past the moon on a clear night behind the Priory; the lilac and laburnum thrill me like an exquisite melody; the green of the fields, the thickly leaved trees, flowers in a garden, all sorts of things that didn't seem to me to matter much are now becoming ineffably precious. The lights in the schoolhouse studies late at night, seen as one crosses the court on the way home from school and chapel, are amazingly beautiful and peaceful.
July 24, 1914