The Upton Letters Part 6

The truth is that the man has no real policy; he sees the boy's deficiencies, and liberates his mind by requesting me, as if I were a kind of tradesman, to see that they are corrected.

Of course the temptation is to write the man an acrimonious letter, and to point out the idiotic character of his suggestions. But that is worse than useless.

What I have done is to write and say that I have received his kind and sensible letter, that he has laid his finger on the exact difficulties, and that naturally I am anxious to put them straight. I then added that his own recollection of his school-days will show that one cannot help a boy in athletic or social matters beyond a certain point, that one can only see that a boy has a fair chance, and is not overlooked, but that other boys would not tolerate (and I know that he does not mean to suggest this) that a boy should be included in a team for which he is unfit, simply in order that his social life should be encouraged. I then point out that as to discipline there is no lack of it here; and that it is only at home that he is spoilt; and that I hope he will use his influence, in a region where I cannot do more than make suggestions, to minimise the evil.

The man will approve of the letter; he will think me sensible and himself extraordinarily wise.

Does that seem to you to be cynical? I don't think it is. The man is sincerely anxious for the boy's welfare, just as I am, and we had better agree than disagree. The fault of his letter is that it is stupid, and that it is offensive. The former quality I can forgive, and the latter is only stupidity in another form. He thinks in his own mind that if I am paid to educate the boy I ought to be glad of advice, that I ought to be grateful to have things that I am not likely to detect for myself pointed out by an enlightened and benevolent man.

Meanwhile I shall proceed to treat the boy on my own theory. I don't expect him to play games; I don't think that it is, humanly speaking, possible to expect a sensitive, frail boy to continue to play a game in which he only makes himself ridiculous and contemptible from first to last. Of course if a boy who is incapable of success in athletics does go on playing games perseveringly and good-humouredly, he gets a splendid training, and, as a rule, conciliates respect. But this boy could not do that.

Then I shall try to encourage the boy in any taste he may exhibit, and try to build up a real structure on these slender lines. The great point is that he shall have SOME absorbing and wholesome instinct. He will be wealthy, and in a position to gratify any whim. He is not in the least likely to do anything foolish or vicious--he has not got the animal spirits for that. I shall encourage him to take up politics; and I shall try to put into his head a desire to do something for his fellow-creatures, and not to live an entirely lonely and self-absorbed life.

I have a theory that in education it is better to encourage apt.i.tudes than to try merely to correct deficiencies. One can't possibly extirpate weaknesses by trying to crush them. One must build up vitality and interest and capacity. It is like the parable of the evil spirits. It is of no use simply to cast them out and leave the soul empty and swept; one must encourage some strong, good spirit to take possession; one must build on the foundations that are there.

The boy is delicate-minded, able and intelligent; he is an interesting companion, when he is once at his ease. If only this busy, fussy, hearty old bore would leave him alone! What I am afraid of his doing is of his getting the boy to stay with him, making him go out hunting, and laughing mercilessly at his tumbles. The misery that a stupid, genial man can inflict upon a sensitive boy like this is dreadful to contemplate.

At the end of the half I shall write a letter about the boy's work, and delicately hint that, if he is encouraged in his subject, he may attain high distinction and eventually rise to political or scientific eminence. The old bawler will take the fly with a swirl--see if he does not! And, if I can secure an interview with him, I will wager that my triumph will be complete.

Does this all seem very dingy to you, my dear Herbert? You have never had to deal with tiresome, stupid people in a professional capacity, you see. There is a distinct pleasure in getting one's own way, in triumphing over an awkward situation, in leading an old buffer by the nose to do the thing which you think right, and to make him believe that you are all the time following his advice and treasuring up his precepts. But I can honestly say that my chief desire is not to amuse myself with this kind of diplomacy, but the real welfare of the child.

I know you will believe that.--Ever yours,

T. B.

UPTON, June 25, 1904.

DEAR HERBERT,--This is not a letter; it is a sketch, an aquarelle out of my portfolio.

Yesterday was a hot, heavy, restless day, with thunder brewing in the dark heart of huge inky clouds; a day when one craves for light, and brisk airs, and cold bare hill-tops; when one desires to get away from one's kind, away from close rooms and irritable persons. So I went off on my patient and uncomplaining bicycle, along a country road; and then crossing a wide common, like the field, I thought, in the Pilgrim's Progress across which Evangelist pointed an improving finger, I turned down to the left to the waterside In the still air, that seemed to listen, the blue wooded hills across the river had a dim, rich beauty.

How mysterious are the fields and heights from which one is separated by a stream, the fields in which one knows every tree and sloping lawn by sight, and where one sets foot so rarely! The road came to an end in a little gra.s.sy s.p.a.ce among high-branching elms. On my left was a farm, with barns and byres, overhung by stately walnut trees; on the right a grange among its great trees, a low tiled house, with white cas.e.m.e.nts, in a pleasant garden, full of trellised roses, a big dovecote, with a clattering flight of wheeling pigeons circling round and round. Hard by, close to the river, stands a little ancient church, with a timbered spire, the trees growing thickly about it, dreaming forgotten dreams.

Here all was still and silent; the very children moved languidly about, not knowing what ailed them. Far off across the wide-watered plain came a low muttering of thunder, and a few big drops pattered in the great elms.

This secluded river hamlet has an old history; the church, which is served from a distant parish, stands in a narrow strip of land which runs down across the fields to the river, and dates from the time when the river was a real trade-highway, and when neighbouring parishes, which had no frontages on the stream, found it convenient to have a wharf to send their produce, timber or bricks, away by water. But the wharf has long since perished, though a few black stakes show where it stood; and the village, having no landing-place and no inn, has dropped out of the river life, and minds its own quiet business.

A few paces from the church the river runs silently and strongly to the great weir below. To-day it was swollen with rain and turbid, and plucked steadily at the withies. To-day the stream, which is generally full of life, was almost deserted. But it came into my head what an allegory it made. Here through the unvisited meadows, with their huge elms, runs this thin line of glittering vivid life; you hear, hidden in dark leaves, the plash of oars, the grunt of rowlocks, and the chatter of holiday folk, to whom the river-banks are but a picture through which they pa.s.s, and who know nothing of the quiet fields that surround them. That, I thought, following a train of reflection, is like life itself, moving in its bright, familiar channel, so unaware of the broad tracts of mystery that hem it in. May there not be presences, unseen, who look down wondering--as I look to-day through my screen of leafy boughs--on the busy-peopled stream that runs so merrily between its scarped banks of clay? I know not; yet it seems as though it might be so.

Beneath the weir, with its fragrant, weedy scent, where the green river plunges and whitens through the sluices, lies a deep pool, haunted by generations of schoolboys, who wander, flannelled and straw-hatted, up through the warm meadows to bathe. In such sweet memories I have my part, when one went riverwards with some chosen friend, speaking with the cheerful frankness of boyhood of all our small concerns, and all we meant to do; and then the cool gra.s.s under the naked feet, the delicious recoil of the fresh, tingling stream, and the quiet stroll back into the ordered life so full of simple happiness.

"Ah! happy fields, ah! pleasing shade, Ah! fields beloved in vain!"

sang the sad poet of Eton--but not in vain, I think, for these old beautiful memories are not sad; the good days are over and gone, and they cannot be renewed; but they are like a sweet spring of youth, whose waters fail not, in which a tired soul may bathe and be clean again. They may bring back

"The times when I remember to have been Joyful, and free from blame."

To be pensive, not sentimental, is the joy of later life. The thought of the sweet things that have had an end, of life lived out and irrevocable, is not a despairing thought, unless it is indulged with an unavailing regret. It is rather to me a sign that, whatever we may be or become, we are surrounded with the same quiet beauty and peace, if we will but stretch out our hands and open our hearts to it. To grow old patiently and bravely, even joyfully--that is the secret; and it is as idle to repine for the lost joys as it would have been in the former days to repine because we were not bigger and stronger and more ambitious. Life, if it does not become sweeter, becomes more interesting; fresh ties are formed, fresh paths open out; and there should come, too, a simple serenity of living, a certainty that, whatever befall, we are in wise and tender hands.

So I reasoned with myself beside the little holy church, not far from the moving stream.

But the time warned me to be going. The thunder had drawn off to the west; a faint breeze stirred and whispered in the elms. The day declined. But I had had my moment, and my heart was full; for it is such moments as these that are the pure gold of life, when the scene and the mood move together to some sweet goal in perfect unison.

Sometimes the scene is there without the mood, or the mood comes and finds no fitting pasturage; but to-day, both were mine; and the thought, echoing like a strain of rich sad music, pa.s.sed beyond the elms, beyond the blue hills, back to its mysterious home. . . .

There, that is the end of my sketch; a little worked up, but substantially true. Tell me if you like the kind of thing; if you do, it is rather a pleasure to write thus occasionally. But it may seem to you to be affected, and, in that case, I won't send you any more of such reveries.

You seem very happy and prosperous; but then you like heat, and enjoy it like a lizard. My love to all of you.--Ever yours,

T. B.

UPTON, July 1, 1904.

DEAR HERBERT,--What you say about forming habits is very interesting.

It is quite true that one gets very little done without a certain method; and it is equally true that, if one does manage to arrive at a certain definite programme for one's life and work, it is very easy to get a big task done. Just reflect on this fact; it would not be difficult, in any life, to so arrange things that one could write a short pa.s.sage every day, say enough to fill a page of an ordinary octavo. Well, if one stuck to it, that would mean that in the course of a year one would have a volume finished. Sometimes my colleagues express surprise that I can find time for so much literary work; and on the other hand if I tell them how much time I am able to devote to it they are equally surprised that I can get anything done, because it seems so little. This is the fact; I can get an hour--possibly two--on Tuesday, two hours on Thursday, one on Friday, two on Sat.u.r.day, and one or two on Sunday--nine hours a week under favourable circ.u.mstances, and never a moment more. But writing being to me the purest pleasure and refreshment, I never lose a minute in getting to work, and I use every moment of the time. That does not include reading; but by dint of having books about, and by working carefully, so that I do not need to go over the same ground twice, I get through a good deal in the week. I have trained myself, too, to be able to write at full speed when I am at work, and I can count on writing three octavo pages in an hour, or even four. The result is, as you will see, that in a term of twelve weeks, I can turn out between three and four hundred pages. The curious thing is that I do better original work in the term-time than in the holidays. I think the pressure of a good deal of mechanical work, not of an exhausting kind, clears the brain and makes it vigorous. Of course it is rather sc.r.a.ppy work; but I lay my plans in the holidays, make my skeleton, and work up my authorities; and so I can go ahead at full steam.

But I have strayed away from the subject of habits; and the moral of the above is only that habits are easy enough if you like the task enough. If I did not care for writing, I should find abundance of excellent reasons why I should not do it.

Pater says somewhere that forming habits is failure in life; by which I suppose he means that if one gets tied down to a petty routine of one's own, it generally ends in one's becoming petty too--narrow-minded and conventional. I don't suppose he referred to method, because he was one of the most methodical of men. He wrote down sentences that came into his mind, scattered ideas, on small cards; when he had a sufficient store of these, he sorted them and built up his essay out of them.

But I am equally aware that habit is apt to become very tyrannical indeed, if it is acquired. In my own case I have got into the habit of writing only between tea and dinner, owing to its being the only time at my disposal, so that I can hardly write at any other time; and that is inconvenient in the holidays. Moreover, I like writing so much, enjoy the shaping of sentences so intensely, that I tend to arrange my day in the holidays entirely with a view to having these particular hours free for writing; and thus for a great part of the year I lose the best and most enjoyable part of the day, the sweet summer evenings, when the tired world grows fragrant and cool.

One ought to have a routine for home life certainly; but it is not wholesome when one begins to grudge the slightest variation from the programme. I speak philosophically, because I am in the grip of the evil myself. The reason why I care so little for staying anywhere, and even for travelling, is because it disarranges my plan of the day, and I don't feel certain of being able to secure the time for writing which I love. But this is wrong; it is vivendi perdere causas, and I think we ought resolutely to court a difference of life at intervals, and to learn to bear with equanimity the suspension of one's daily habits. You are certainly wise, if you find it suits you, to secure the morning for writing. Personally my mind is not at its best then; it is dulled and weakened by sleep, and it requires the tonic of routine work and bodily exercise before it expands and flourishes.

Another grievous tendency which grows on me is an incapacity for idleness. That will amuse you, when you remember the long evenings at Eton which we used to spend in vacant talk. I remember so well your saying after tea one evening, in that poky room of yours with the barred windows at the end of the upper pa.s.sage, "How delightful to think that there are four hours with nothing whatever to do!" Do you remember, too, that night when we sate at tea, blissfully, wholesomely tired after a college match? John and Ellen, those strange, gruff beings, came in to wash up, carrying that horrible, steaming can of tea-dregs in which our cups were plunged: they cleared the table as we sate; it was over before six, and it was not till the prayer-bell rang at 9.30 that we became aware we had sate the whole evening with the table between us. What DID we talk about? I wish to Heaven I could sit and talk like that now! That is another thing which grows upon me, my dislike of mere chatting: it is not priggish to say it, because I regret and abominate my stupidity in that respect. But there is nothing now which induces more rapid and more desperate physical fatigue than to sit still and know I have to pump up talk for an hour.

The moral of all this is that YOU must take good care to form habits, and _I_ must take care to unform them. YOU must resist the temptation to read the papers, to stroll, to talk to your children; and _I_ must try to cultivate leisurely propensities. I think that, as a schoolmaster, one might do very good work as a peripatetic talker. I have a big garden here--to think that you have never seen it!--with a great screen of lilacs and some pleasant gravel walks. I never enter it, I am afraid. But if in the pleasant summer I could learn the art of sitting there, of having tea there, and making a few boys welcome if they cared to come, it would be good for all of us, and would give the boys some pleasant memories. I don't think there is anything gives me a pleasanter thrill than to recollect the times I spent as a boy in old Hayward's garden. He told me and Francis Howard that we might go and sit there if we liked. You were not invited, and I never dared to ask him. It was a pleasant little place, with a lawn surrounded with trees, and a summer-house full of armchairs, with an orchard behind it--now built over. Howard and I used at one time to go there a good deal, to read and talk. I remember him reading Shakespeare's sonnets aloud, though I had not an idea what they were all about--but his rich, resonant voice comes back to me now; and then he showed me a MS. book of his own poems. Ye G.o.ds, how great I thought them! I copied many of them out and have them still. Hayward used to come strolling about; I can see him standing there in a big straw hat, with his hands behind him, like the jolly old leisurely fellow he was. "Don't get up, boys,"

he used to say. Once or twice he sate with us, and talked lazily about some book we were reading. He never took any trouble to entertain us, but I used to feel that we were welcome, and that it really pleased him that we cared to come. Now he lives in a suburb, on a pension: why do I never go to see him?

"La, Perry, how yer do run on!" as the homely Warden's wife said to the voluble Chaplain. I never meant to write you such a letter; but I am glad indeed to find you really settling down. We must cultivate our garden, as Voltaire said; and I only wish that the garden of my own spirit were more full of "shelter and fountains," and less stocked with long rows of humble vegetables; but there are a few flowers here and there.--Ever yours,

T. B.

MONK'S ORCHARD, UPTON, July 11, 1904.

MY DEAR HERBERT,--I am going to pour out a pent-up woe. I have just escaped from a very fatiguing experience. I said good-bye this morning, with real cordiality, to a thoroughly uncongenial and disagreeable visitor. You will probably be surprised when I tell you his name, because he is a popular, successful, and, many people hold, a very agreeable man. It is that ornament of the Bar, Mr. William Welbore, K.C. His boy is in my house; and Mr. Welbore (who is a widower) invited himself to stay a Sunday with me in the tone of one who, if anything, confers a favour. I had no real reason for refusing, and, to speak truth, any evasion on my part would have been checked by the boy.

It is a fearful bore here to have any one staying in the house at all, unless he is so familiar an old friend that you can dispense with all ceremony. I have no guest-rooms to speak of; and a guest is always in my study when I want to be there, talking when I want to work, or wanting to smoke at inconvenient times. One's study is also one's office; boys keep dropping in, and, when I have an unperceptive guest, I have to hold interviews with boys wherever I can--in pa.s.sages and behind doors. What made it worse was that it was a wet Sunday, so that my visitor sate with me all day, and I have no doubt thought he was enlivening a dull professional man with some full-flavoured conversation. Then one has to arrange for separate meals; when I am alone I never, as you know, have dinner, but go in to the boys' supper and have a slice of cold meat. But on this occasion I had to have a dinner-party on Sat.u.r.day and another on Sunday; and the breakfast hour, when I expect to read letters and the paper, was taken up with general conversation. I am ashamed to think how much discomposed I was; but a schoolmaster is practically always on duty. I wonder how Mr. Welbore would have enjoyed the task of entertaining me for a day or two in his chambers! But one ought not, I confess, to be so wedded to one's own habits; and I feel, when I complain, rather like the rich gentleman who said to John Wesley, when his fire smoked, "These are some of the crosses, Mr. Wesley, that I have to bear."

I could have stood it with more equanimity if only Mr. Welbore had been a congenial guest. But even in the brief time at my disposal I grew to dislike him with an intensity of which I am ashamed. I hated his clothes, his boots, his eye-gla.s.s, the way he cleared his throat, the way he laughed. He is a successful, downright, blunt, worldly man, and is generally called a good fellow by his friends. He arrived in time for tea on Sat.u.r.day; he talked about his boy a little; the man is in this case, unlike Wordsworth's hero, the father of the child; and the boy will grow up exactly like him. Young Welbore does his work punctually and without interest; he plays games respectably; he likes to know the right boys; he is not exactly disagreeable, but he derides all boys who are in the least degree shy, stupid, or unconventional. He is quite a little man of the world, in fact. Well, I don't like that type of creature, and I tried to indicate to the father that I thought the boy was rather on the wrong lines. He heard me with impatience, as though I was bothering him about matters which belonged to my province; and he ended by laughing, not very agreeably, and saying: "Well, you don't seem to have much of a case against Charlie; he appears to be fairly popular. I confess that I don't much go in for sentiment in education; if a boy does his work, and plays his games, and doesn't get into trouble, I think he is on the right lines." And then he paid me an offensive compliment: "I hear you make the boys very comfortable, and I am sure I am obliged to you for taking so much interest in him." He then went off for a little to see the boy. He appeared at dinner, and I had invited two or three of the most intelligent of my colleagues. Mr.