A red-letter day in the history of the family of Traherne. Elspeth gave birth to a daughter this afternoon at half-past one. For months past I have been trying to look after her in view of this great event, for the last weeks I have myself been in a state of frenzy lest anything should go wrong and I should lose her. To-day has been a ghastly ordeal. I had to spend most of it in school, which was a good thing, because it kept my mind from brooding. From nine to one I taught, speaking all the time, trying my hardest to concentrate on quadratic equations and Army English. I went up at lunch-time and was told to disappear till four o'clock. I went for miles on my bicycle seeing nothing, my mind a blank, except for one ever-recurring sentence: "O God! grant that it may be all right." I couldn't face the thought of her going under. Elspeth is the whole world to me. She has gradually weaned me from my love of schoolmastering and now I think of nothing at all but her. I went back at four and was told that everything was all right and that I was the father of a daughter. I thought of nothing but Elspeth's health and I was taken up to see her: she looked dreadfully frail and ill. I forgot the baby: I didn't even want to see her until I had seen Elspeth—then I was shown the wee morsel of humanity in its cot. Its cry sounded to me quite uncanny. It seemed so hard to realize that another life had entered the world since I was last in the house. Every one at the school has been up to congratulate me: hundreds of telegrams had to be dispatched, flowers and presents of all sorts began to arrive. I begin to feel really important, but the fact that I am a father will take a long time to realize. I had no idea how strung up I had been all the term before: the presence of a nurse in the house for the last week had worried me and kept me in a state of continual torture. The courage of a girl having to face such an ordeal in cold blood is positively wonderful. I only hope that she will quickly recover.
August 1, 1916
It has been a fortnight of great trial. Elspeth was left very weak and ill and is by no means well yet. She has had a very hard time. The infant is as good as gold and amazingly healthy. She cries very seldom. I had always imagined that children cried through the entire night, but this kid never cries at all: she is one big smile by day and contentedly sleepy at night. She is beautifully proportioned and has large blue eyes and regular features. I had always thought men rather fools who raved about their children's looks: all babies used to look alike to me. Now I know that there never was such a baby as mine: I look anxiously into "prams" along the road and compare the babies whom I see there with mine. I have managed to hide my affection for her from all the people who ask me silly questions. I'm not going to be classed with all the other fathers there ever were as a blind worshipper of my own child. Her hands and feet give me undiluted pleasure. It is amazing to watch her moving them about: her suppleness ought to be a sign of healthy activity in the future. Her head is small and splendidly proportioned. I hope she does not grow up a fool. She gives Elspeth a wonderful, never-ending interest in life: she thinks of nothing else. It is the best thing that could possibly have happened to her: we ought to have had a child at the very beginning. I am more proud of her than I dare acknowledge to any one except myself. I should like to write a book just jotting down her daily growth, her recognition of her mother, of the nurse, of me, of strangers, of things in a room. At present she loves looking at her hands and she keeps her thumb in her mouth most of the day and night. She has an extraordinary amount of individuality: unluckily, she is terribly frightened of any sudden noise. This must be inherited. I hope to Heaven that she does not inherit her father's dementia as well. At present she has got, I am told, exactly the expression of my eyes, the far-away, detached look varied by a piercing, questioning, quizzical gaze that so disconcerts strangers. Elspeth's mother is extraordinarily attached to her and would give her life for her: it is a joy to see the delight which the infant takes in her grandmother and vice versa.
We have christened her Prunella after my mother. I had the luck to get Tony down to the christening to be her godfather. Elspeth is going to spend the first part of the holidays in Bath while I take Tony for a walking tour in Devon and Cornwall during his convalescence. He has been wounded in both arms. He, like everybody else, thinks her perfect. I only hope that she will grow up loving us and finding us worthy of her love. We must try to make life easier for her than it has been for us.
September 20, 1916
Tony and I had a wonderful holiday together. Now that Elspeth has Prunella and her mother she is happy and I, for some strange reason, feel that I am leaving some part of myself behind with her in the person of the kid, so I did not feel the separation so acutely as I should otherwise have done.
I always return from a holiday in the West Country a different man. On this occasion as the result Tony wrote some wonderfully descriptive verses and three short stories, and I was inspired to begin my first novel. I am not satisfied with it, because as usual I have hurried through it far too quickly, my characterization is not sound, my protagonists have simply run away with me. I start off by meaning to say one thing and then end up by saying something quite different. I cannot visualize scenes accurately: I give a hazy, vague impression like a man who never keeps his eye on the object. I have often, for instance, tried since I have been at Marlton to describe the school, the Priory, or the town, but I have never succeeded in pleasing myself with the result. The town to me is just a cluster of beautiful old houses set in a picturesque valley flanked with wooded hills; the Priory which stands in the midst defies description. I know that when I get inside I gaze at the thin perpendicular pillars, the ornate ceiling, the many coloured stained-glass windows, the slender beauty of the whole, but I cannot get the impression it makes upon me into words: the school is simply an Oxford College with lime-trees in the quadrangle and latticed windows to its studies and no more. I can't paint what it looks like on a clear moonlight night, or when the lights shine through the rain on to the puddles in the main courts.... So it is with Devon and Cornwall: their very names ring in my ears like some magic phrase, but I can't explain the fascination these counties have for me.
It is all rather a tragedy for me, for a man who cannot see or describe accurately can scarcely expect to become a writer, and I am almost as keen to bring out a great book as I am to be a great schoolmaster. The tragedy lies even deeper, for I fail even in my calling. I want to be able to plant my finger on abuses and rid the world of them, and I find I am simply in my hurry destroying the wheat with the tares and bringing the whole edifice of education about my ears with no definite constructive theory about the rebuilding. I love boys but I don't attract many but the outcasts. During the time that I have been at Marlton I have only got to know at the outside a dozen intimately, and I don't know that my influence on these has been wholly good. I rouse in them a spirit of criticism and get them to refuse to believe anything until they have proved it for themselves. I have made enemies of practically all the staff, all of whom are better fellows than I am and do more good with less effort. I seem to be the Martha of my profession, cumbered about with too much serving, always thinking that I am the only one who is really working because I kick up such a fuss about it.
I seem to have been like this in everything that I have undertaken. When I was married, I considered that I was the only man who had ever had to learn by experience the laws that govern marriage, when Prunella was born I imagined myself to be the only father in the world. I suppose I do feel joys and miseries more acutely than most people. The smallest kindness shown me makes me almost worship the doer of it; the least hint of inimical criticism and I am up in arms in a moment and consider myself the most badly treated man on the face of the earth. It is awful to have to face oneself and write oneself down as self-centred, narrow, anarchical, selfish, and all the rest of it. At any rate those friends I have, have clung to me through thick and thin, and Elspeth has been a brick to stick to me as she has. I made her come up to town to see Tony before he went back to France and to buy some new clothes. I am so proud of her these days that I want to dress her smartly, give her none but the best things to wear, entertain her to all the amusements that are going. She loves London; the shops and restaurants and theatres all provide her with a never-failing source of interest. Besides which it is necessary to have a fling in the big world before we retire to our backwater at Marlton: it is all very well for me, but there is nothing for her to do there but tend Prunella.
December 19, 1916