Boys think far more deeply than they used to. They grow much more quickly to maturity than they were wont. In one way one misses the careless irresponsibility: it kept one eternally young to be always with youth, but now, partly owing to the fact that all the senior boys work in the holidays in munition factories or on farms, the whole school is much more "grown up" in spite of the fact that the average age is much lower.
January 17, 1916
Elspeth and I spent Christmas in Bath and I tried to write without much success, so we decided to go to Bournemouth, where we stayed for three weeks and enjoyed every minute of it. By a strange chance we met at least half a dozen people who were with us in Scotland in the summer.
We walked about the cliffs trying to get strong and went to many entertainments and read a great many novels. We joined in at nights with the hotel people in their amusements, which did us both good and went a long way to remove the depression of the times.
I still go up to London every week to see my specialist. I am gradually getting quieter, though there are moments when my restlessness drives me to do crazy things. There are hardly any old Radcastrians of my time left. Two masters are back maimed for life, one armless, and the other without a right leg. The other young ones are all killed. Stapleton has given up his living and is working on a farm: Montague and Jimmy Haye keep on coming and going from and to France. Both have been wounded once, but they seem to bear charmed lives. They always spent some part of their leave with us at Marlton. They live for getting somewhere where it is really quiet and there is no reminder of the war.
April 3, 1916
It is strange to walk through the streets of Marlton and hear working-men talking of Salonika, Gallipoli, Mesopotamia, and India in the most casual way as if they were all villages within easy walking distances. The postmen, porters, and farm labourers are beginning to come back, having been invalided out of the services. All of them are full of wonderful exploits and make us poor stay-at-homes feel out of it and useless. The term has passed quietly. I have been told by the Head Master that my writings do not altogether please my colleagues, that I do not temper my enthusiasm with sufficient discretion or think long enough before I commit myself to a judgment. I have been too much obsessed with my theory that the intellectual and æsthetic faculties should be cultivated before the others to see the dangerous side of my tenets. I hate upsetting the masters here because some of them have been very long-suffering with my madness. I am certainly extremely unpopular because, like Feste, "I am comptible, even to the least sinister usage." Under my mask I am abnormally sensitive. I hate making enemies. I want to be every man's friend. I almost deceive myself into thinking that I am, then in an unguarded moment I flaunt an opinion which disgusts the conventional; in my horror of ignorance and dullness I make sweeping generalizations about people who live in the country and I somewhat naturally have the whole hive about my ears. Who am I, forsooth, to talk of ignorance and dullness? Why should I set myself up as a pinnacle of light? I don't: it's just because I am striving so hard to escape from the slough that I seek to drag out others with me, a foolish, quixotic act.
Elspeth and I have been amusing ourselves looking at all the vacant houses in the town to find somewhere larger: it is rather a good game going over other people's houses and comparing them with one's own.
We had a fortnight of deep snow and spent the time in tobogganing, which took me right back to boyhood's days. For that fortnight I was quite easy in my mind and irresponsible again, forgetful of the myriad worries that beset me. We find it very hard to keep going. I get agonies of apprehension just before each post comes in, wondering what manuscripts are going to be returned, hoping against hope that at last something will be accepted. If only I could get a series commissioned, I should be happy. It's a fiendish business thinking out subjects to amuse people, only to be turned down by one editor after another. I spend a small fortune in stamps alone. All the same I ought not to grumble: I make on an average about £100 a year by writing. When editors do pay, they pay handsomely, quite out of proportion to the trouble of writing the one article that finds acceptance. What stupefies me is the enormous drawer full of writings all sent back too often to submit again, or else topical and hence dead. I find that I can't write on the war. I want to be definitely literary or definitely educational. My colleagues dislike my doing the latter, and there is very little market for the former.