January 20, 1915
I get heartily sick of the holidays these days because there is so little to do, and I hate to see all my pals training while I am doing nothing at all. Schoolmastering seems so dull, but there is no doubt where one's duty lies.
April 15, 1915
I have now finished a second term at Marlton under war conditions. I find that the war has brought us closer together, masters and boys alike. We have had lectures from wounded soldiers on the campaign in different parts of the globe. The Corps is more flourishing than ever. Our favourite amusement now is the night-attack, which is nearer the real thing than anything else we do. I went down to a depot the other day to get some "tips" and saw some first-rate signalling, the Lewis gun, and some bombing practice.
Poor Elspeth about half-way through the term complained to me one day that she felt too rotten to keep some engagement that she was due for and I fetched the doctor much against her will, and to my horror he told me that she had appendicitis and must be operated on immediately. We took her over to Lewes and put her into a nursing home, and I left her there late one night after a last passionate embrace and was taken over by Leary the next day in his side-car to hear the result of the operation and was told that she had come through it all right. I shall never forget the agony of waiting to hear the verdict. I made Leary motor me at terrific speed half across Sussex to keep my mind from dwelling too insistently on it. Her heart is weak and she nearly went under, but thank God she pulled through in the end, although she was very weak for a long time after. My life alone during her illness I can't dwell upon: it was altogether too horrible. I roamed about the countryside absolutely disconsolate. I have no use for life at all without her. Every day as soon as work was over I "push-biked" the eight miles into Lewes to see her and talk for a little, then cycled home again to my lonely cottage. I was nearer dementia then than I have ever been. I have got to know more of the boys in the school this last term. They are a wonderfully fine lot, particularly O'Dowd and Raynes, who still write weekly essays for me and discuss literary problems.
I tried to act The Younger Generation in my Debating Society, but the idea was quashed by the Censor. I have altered the old system of reading round a table and substituted a much more effective plan. We now read in Big School from the platform standing up, with action and dresses complete. Instead of each individual member having to buy copies of the play I have now bought numbers of copies and formed a library upon which any member of the school may draw just as he likes.
We have had one or two strange temporary masters. One, an elderly scholar, had an eccentric habit of always searching the bottoms of one's trousers for matches: he had once heard of a man being burnt alive that way and was in a continual fright lest it should happen to some one whom he knew. We have got a new Sixth Form tutor, a fellow of Queen's, Oxford, who has become a firm friend of mine. He is, like most of my colleagues, very well off and has furnished himself with a splendid library which he allows me to use. I have done a good deal of writing and much reading: my books are costing me less because I am doing a good deal of reviewing for the London papers. One of the strangest effects of the war up to now has been its result upon the world of papers and books. Paper is very expensive and there is great difficulty in getting MSS. printed and bound, but people are all buying books in great numbers, particularly poetry and fiction.
Owing to my own smaller successes I have received invitations to meet and to stay with some of the leading writers of the day, which needless to say I have accepted, though if I go I shall have to go without Elspeth, for as soon as it was possible we took her by car from the nursing home in Lewes all the way to her home at Bath, where the doctor says she must stay for some months.
I can't face next term without her: I don't know what I shall do and yet I cannot conscientiously expect her to come back to me until she is quite fit to look after the house again. At present she is recovering very slowly and looks dreadfully weak and thin.