In my writings I am becoming too critical, but it is all rather superficial. I know that there are grave abuses in the Public School system, though the war swept away at least half of them; I also know that I have a reputation here of indulging quite indiscriminately in wholesale destructive diatribes: "the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up" as they say of me. I have not tempered my enthusiasm with reticence or bridled my tongue severely enough. The result is that I have divided the school into two great factions, the loyalists and the seceders. This is what my enemies lay to my charge. I cannot believe that my influence carries any weight at all. I am only a junior master and I don't mix with the boys here as I used to at Radchester for the simple reason that I live too far away from the school and that I have a wife. The only people who see much of the boys are the House-masters and the House tutors. The rest of us take a few sets, control, say, a debating or natural history society or choir, perhaps are responsible for a form, and there's an end of our influence. By bowling at the nets one meets a few others, in the Corps one comes across two Houses, and of course the school prefects are known to all the staff. But there is very little intimacy between boy and master, though such relations are as much encouraged here as they were discouraged at Radchester. A few of my closer friends come up to borrow books and stay and talk sometimes, others again come to hear the gramophone or to play the piano to me, but I have all too few friends among the boys. There have been one or two colossal rows this term, in spite of the fact that we are at war. Boy-nature seems to remain the same in spite of all—and not only boy-nature but adult nature, for even here members of Common Room fight one against the other like tigers when one man infringes on another man's rights. All these disputes have quite petty beginnings, but they assume alarming proportions in a very short space of time. I have been preaching about the dangers of over-athleticism. The consequence is that there is a blood-feud between those who worship at the shrine of games and those who think that games should be played merely as recreation. This has now become a question of Houses. There are Houses where everything is put second to games and others where games are put last. It is all rather comic because it really means nothing at all. The whole matter is always just personal. There are Houses with a tradition against taking the Corps seriously: there are others where they think of nothing else. One good sign I have noticed of late is the resuscitation of House Debating and Literary Societies. Boys debate among themselves on all sorts of school topics, internal politics; the spirit of criticism is abroad: boys are beginning to think, there is hope for them. There are, however, many masters who tell me that boys ought not to think: they ought to accept and not question, that to inculcate the carping spirit is a malicious practice. I wonder how much this is true. I stand and everyone knows it, for the cultivation of the æsthetic and the intellectual first, just because in the past they have been so despised. I am myself neither æsthetic nor intellectual but I have a craving after each. Athletics in themselves cannot satisfy the inner cravings of man: he wants more nourishment than that. I like to see the school magazine filled with good sound articles of general interest and poetry, as well as accounts of the term's doings.
I cannot see why the latter should oust the former any more than the former should supplant the latter. I want fair dealing. At present there is no fair dealing. Consequently some of the brighter spirits have produced magazines of their own, satirical, comic, serious, any and every sort as a counterblast to the school magazine. These illegitimate productions have a short life but a quite merry one. They create endless diversion owing to the fact that the satire is too carefully veiled for any but the very few to understand it; people are set guessing as to the possible authors, and there is always a rumour that the paper is about to be suppressed. They show a spark of humour, whereas the legitimate magazine is always deadly serious: when it aims at humour, as in its correspondence, it only succeeds in being ineffably tedious and dull.
September 20, 1915
We had a wonderful holiday in Scotland. We went via Edinburgh to Kingussie, which is in Strathspey, in full view of the Cairngorms; the scenery between Blair Atholl and Kingussie is magnificently rugged and grand. Kingussie itself is a fair-sized village of white-washed houses with two quite excellent hotels, both under the same management. We chose the cheaper and had the luck to have the run of the other. From the very first we made friends. By a strange chance two of the cheeriest and most typical of the best sort of Marltonians happened to be up there and we went for many excursions together, bathing in lochs and burns and climbing cairns.
Acting on my specialist's advice I began to take up golf and became immediately seized with a mania. Before we left I was playing thirty-six holes a day. The golf-course at Kingussie is right up the mountainside and is truly hazardous and sporting. There were crowds of visitors, all of them as merry as could be. Except for a few men in kilts and trains full of sailors passing through, one would never have believed that we were a nation at war. Every sort of person came and stayed at our hotel during the eight weeks that we were there, from Mr. Asquith and Mr. McKenna to the most astoundingly vulgar shopkeepers from Dundee and Glasgow. The wonderful fresh air soon brought colour to Elspeth's cheeks and she began to take exercise and climb some of the peaks near by with me: she also bathed with me in the Spey and sat and painted the blue hills while I wrote.
We made friends with the English chaplain and his wife, with the hotel proprietor who had amassed a wonderful collection of curios, with a peerless Marlborough boy whom I am never likely to forget, with a few convalescent officers and most of the residents. Never a day passed that was not full of enjoyment. The weeks passed all too quickly but I rapidly grew better and my nerves became quieter and my outlook on life less turbulent and queer. I owe my cure mainly to golf, which kept my thoughts off writing or the war.
I have had articles in most of the important reviews and in several of the weeklies. I find that I am being hailed as an educational expert and a literary critic, whereas in reality I am neither. I am a poor, rather demented creature with very high ideals and in my anxiety to see some of my ideas carried out I offend many good men, put myself into a false position and ruin myself in other people's estimation. I am over-enthusiastic. If I could only learn to go more slowly. It is the same old story about my mathematical teaching. I can't understand why a boy should not acquire the rudiments of mathematics quickly. I know that he could if he would only bestir himself. So if only the schools as a whole would bestir themselves, we should get boys interested in something more important than games. I go the wrong way to work. I haven't got the tact of a flea. As my first publisher said when I sent him the draft of my first novel, "This is too damned honest." That has been my failure through life. Instead of turning things over in my mind I just blurt out what I am thinking at the moment and get angry because every one doesn't straightway agree.
Elspeth and I spent a few days at Nairn in order to taste the sea breezes and I played golf with a Cambridge billiard Blue, who has now a post in the British Museum. Nairn is full of interesting people, but it is a strange anomaly of a place. In parts it is as hideous as Radchester, in others, as in the view across to Cromarty, it is exquisitely beautiful: the colours are soft and of every hue. I found this part of Scotland interesting from a literary point of view. There is certainly a touch of Macbeth in Forres: and "Ossian" could only have been written by a man who knew Kingussie. I hope before I die that we shall once again have the chance to see Loch Laggan: I have never been more taken with a piece of scenery in my life. Laggan is like a miniature sea, set in between two beautifully shaped hills, ideally quiet, perfect for bathing and for rambling about on the moors. But it is too far out of the world for a man situated as I am now, who cannot bear to be out of touch with the latest movements. Laggan would be the place to go to worry out some new philosophy or to compose some wonderful new piece of music. I think I could write a novel there. But there must be no rumours of wars over the other side of the hill. In these days the heart pines for London and friends: it sounds ungrateful to say this, for Scotland did a great deal for me, and Elspeth and I both benefited enormously from our stay and were loath to go.
December 31, 1915
We determined to take in a paying guest this term: our Scottish tour cost us £100. Luckily we got an exceedingly interesting man, just down from Oxford, who has come here to take temporary work. He is a great historian and exceedingly keen on political economy. He began by being badly "ragged" by the boys and detested by his colleagues because of his rather new ideas and revolutionary principles: I came to like him very much. He entertained Elspeth and me a good deal. When he first arrived he was deadly serious, but we soon laughed him into a more equable state of mind: unfortunately for us he was conscripted although he was nearly blind, and so he had to go.