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25 chapters
A SCHOOLMASTER'S DIARY
A SCHOOLMASTER'S DIARY
" The man who looks at this view, for the first time, with the naked eye, sees far more of it than the man who looks at it for the hundredth time through smoked glasses. Experience is the smoke on the glasses; it's the curse of our profession. We are all much more efficient when we're young than we ever are afterwards. Give me the young and inexperienced man. "—"The Lanchester Tradition." PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN AT THE COMPLETE PRESS WEST NORWOOD LONDON TO ELSPETH TRAHERNE WITHOUT WHOSE VALUA
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INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR
INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR
Patrick Traherne , only son of the Rev. Thomas Traherne of North Darley Vicarage, Derbyshire, was born on July 14, 1885. He was educated at Rugby and New College, Oxford, and immediately upon leaving the University he became a Public School master. I well remember my first meeting with him. It was during my first term at Oxford. I had been reading "Centuries of Meditations" and in particular this passage, which I cannot refrain from quoting, because to it I owe my friendship with Patrick: "Your
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I
I
September 20, 1909 It is very strange and frightening: all the boys seem to me to be grown men and I, a veritable minnow in a sea of Tritons, but I suppose really they are quite bovine and regard me much as cows regard human beings—as their natural master. I wonder! I confess I am in a panic about my ability to keep order. On several nights in the "vac" I had nightmares of classes of unruly boys refusing to obey me, shouting, throwing things about and generally making nuisances of themselves and
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II
II
January 20, 1910 I suppose it is an ineradicable trait in human nature to want to be where one is not: when I was at home I longed for Radchester: now that I am safely back in my own rooms I miss the civilization of home, the constant presence of the other sex, the beauties of our moors and combes. This is really a very savage, uncouth sort of place: at present we are snow-bound, which seems to cut us off more than ever from the outside world. I should hate to be ill here: the school doctor is,
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III
III
May 4, 1910 I am glad to be back again, but I never enjoyed any holiday in all my life as I enjoyed the one just finished. Illingworth and I took a train to Bideford on the first day of the holidays and put up in the hotel where Kingsley wrote "Westward Ho!" The difference between that old, bizarre, mediæval sleepy town and Radchester is impossible to believe. We spent our first evening talking to old sailors on the quay, and it did not require much imagination to take us back to the brave days
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IV
IV
August 10, 1910 I am back in Chagford again after ten of the best days I can remember. Camp was one continuous round of sheer joy. The weather was good: they gave us plenty of work to do; I learnt an immense amount of soldiering and I have become quite as keen as any of them. O'Connor, our O.C., has recommended me for a commission and I go into barracks at the Depot in Exeter next week. I had no idea that life under canvas could be so good. To be woken after a dreamless sleep at five on a perfec
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V
V
October 1, 1910 I have joined the Times Book Club. I find that I cannot get along without a constant supply of new books. I want to keep abreast of modern thought at all costs. I don't see why, because I am condemned to teach Descartes and Pythagoras, I should deny myself Henry James or Bourget. I find that standard works are not enough. There are times when Pope palls on me, when Dickens and Thackeray ask to be given a rest. At such times I want to read some of the new school, the men who have
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VI
VI
March 3, 1911 These Easter terms, short as they are, are a big strain on the nervous system: no sooner do we get back to work than some luckless youth spreads measles, chicken-pox, scarlet fever or some other malady through the school, and we have to teach depleted forms, drill depleted companies and play House games with half our side away. I find that my favourite illness is influenza. I usually manage to keep a sort of running cold all through the winter months, which develops periodically in
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VII
VII
June 4, 1911 We've been back a month and many things have happened since I last wrote in my diary. In the first place Marshall has gone. I am much too near the event to be able to judge of it sanely and I can't write of it at length. He was always antagonistic to me. I can't say I liked him but I tried never to show my aversion. He was repulsive in every way, but his sermons were good: he was a good disciplinarian and teacher. Boys in his form were at any rate thoroughly taught. In mine they fai
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VIII
VIII
August 10, 1911 It's been a good camp in every way. I was battalion scout most of the time and had the extraordinary luck to outwit a whole section of Cameronians (regulars) in one field-day while I was investigating behind the enemy's lines. What an ideal country for fighting this is, with all the pine-trees and the long stretch of Laffan's Plain and Cæsar's Camp. I wish that Radchester could be burnt down and rebuilt somewhere on these Surrey hills. Every evening I used to tramp over to the Al
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IX
IX
October 13, 1911 Back again at Radchester. As usual there are a few rows on. Two of the parson members of the staff are quarrelling because Tomson (the High Church one) will call the Communion "Eucharist," and will talk about the "Catholic" instead of the Protestant Church. Mathews on the other hand calls the altar the communion-table. A battle royal is in progress. I believe Tomson will have to go. This is a very Low Church school and any one who crosses himself or indulges in any ritualistic p
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X
X
February 23, 1912 It was appalling to have to leave the comforts of Bath for the wilds of Radchester. It has been the worst Easter term so far within the remembrance of man. We were snowed right up from the beginning and House-fights of snowballing soon ceased to amuse. We are simply shivering in our rooms. The whole place is one medley of germs. Every conceivable sort of contagious disease is raging. It is useless trying to teach anybody anything except individually, for there is no continuity,
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XI
XI
August 12, 1912 Camp at Tidworth was a splendid holiday. Of course the Plain is not so exciting as Aldershot: there are no baths and no towns to visit, but I like the bare wildness of it all, the undulating hills, the wide views on every side, the clumps of trees, the gorse and the bracken. They didn't work us very hard this year, owing to the fact that there had been some row about overdoing it at Aldershot last August. That didn't worry me. I don't come to camp to work. I come to mix with as m
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XII
XII
December 31, 1912 My form play was a great success on the last night of term: boys really are far better actors than grown-up people as a rule. They enter into the spirit of the part more quickly. I spent Christmas quietly at home, reading, overeating myself, writing letters, dispatching Christmas cards, attending a vast number of church services, visiting the cottagers, dancing in the village schoolroom, and gossiping with my father and mother. On the 27th I came down to Bath for the Christmas
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XIII
XIII
July 9, 1913 As soon as we got back to Bath I was sent to a doctor, who told me that I was suffering from a very severe nervous breakdown, and that I must do literally nothing till September but laze. So I have parted from Radchester for ever. Once I was married he said I should probably become normal again. Elspeth and I spent our days shopping and making arrangements for the wedding. We went down to Marlton to find a suitable house to live in and found one about a mile from the school, right o
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XIV
XIV
October 4, 1913 I have now had my first taste of life as a master at Marlton. The air here is sluggish, warm and unhealthy. I never want to go out and I always feel tired. There is none of the energy which one associated with Radchester. The place is altogether different. In the first place there is practically no Common Room life, which is perhaps a good thing. We only gather in Common Room from 11 to 11.15 every morning for "break." The masters live all over the town. There are eight houses an
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XV
XV
January 13, 1914 Elspeth is now with me at my father's home and in bed with "flu." While we were there I got an invitation from Gregson's to write a book for them on education, so Elspeth and I went straight down to Bath, and I shut myself and wrote "Reform in Education" in ten days. It amounts to 50,000 words. I find that I simply cannot write slowly. I start to plan a thing out, then my brain refuses to take in anything except matter for the book. I look on meals as a needless interruption. I
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XVI
XVI
September 17, 1914 Even now I can't realize it: I went into that nursing home on a beautiful peaceful evening in July with nothing more important to worry about than my silly old appendix, and somehow while I was lying low and not worrying the entire world seems to have changed. I came in thinking that it might be exciting to go to Ireland, because there was a chance of a slight "scrap," and I come out and find the whole world in a death-struggle. It is like some hideous nightmare. I suppose war
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XVII
XVII
July 31, 1915 This term has been the worst in my recollection. Elspeth was not allowed to come back at the beginning of term because she was not able to cope with the housework, so I thought to compromise by going up to Bath every week-end to see her. I did this, but the five days between each visit became so ghastly that I could not face them. I begged her to come back at all costs to save my brain. She did so for a few weeks, to her mother's intense indignation and her own no little wrath. Bot
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XVIII
XVIII
May 4, 1916 We spent the Easter holidays near a munitions works in Essex and had our first taste of Zeppelins. I was acting in some amateur theatricals to amuse the workers in the factories, and while we were driving home afterwards immediately above us sailed gracefully along the grey cigar-shaped beautiful engine of destruction. The noise of the bursting shells and the bombs she dropped was terrific: but none of the people who live here seemed to worry at all. I was frightened considerably, bu
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APPENDIX
APPENDIX
I have thought it good, for the sake of those who have somehow missed Patrick Traherne's published work, which he produced under a variety of pseudonyms and initials (G. K., J. B., A. C. B., and K. R., being his favourites), to append a fragment here of a book which he never finished. It was to be called "The Future of the Boy," but I have been unable to find more than the Prologue and Epilogue: he wrote to me on several occasions asking advice on technical points, and I had gathered from these
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PROLOGUE
PROLOGUE
Why do not English boys care for learning? Lord Bryce (January 3, 1914)....
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MODERN SHELL: TO-DAY
MODERN SHELL: TO-DAY
The boy's first intimation that a new day of miserable waste has begun is received by the clanging in his ears of a discordant bell by a man servant, whose sole claim to attention in these pages is that he also acts as the senior boys' bookmaker's agent, and supplier of cigarettes, tobacco, matches and pipes at a rate highly profitable to himself. The compulsory bath over (no boy would wash unless he was compelled, that is an idea that you who live on adages and saws which are one tissue of lies
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EPILOGUE
EPILOGUE
Education is the release of man from self. You have to widen the horizons of your children, encourage and intensify their curiosity and their creative impulses, and cultivate and enlarge their sympathies. Under your guidance and the suggestions you will bring to bear on them, they have to shed the old Adam of instinctive suspicions, hostilities, and passions, and to find themselves again in the great being of the Universe. —"The World Set Free."...
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MODERN SHELL: TO-MORROW
MODERN SHELL: TO-MORROW
In the first place it must be borne in mind that one great difference in the attitude of this form to life in general in the future will be caused by the fact that it will be a mixed class of boys and girls, and will be recruited from all sections of the people, so that there will be every chance of there being practically no divergence in age, physique or intelligence between the top and bottom, to use the existing phraseology, between A and Z, as they will then be placed. The boys and girls wi
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