We have had one or two strange temporary masters. One, an elderly scholar, had an eccentric habit of always searching the bottoms of one's trousers for matches: he had once heard of a man being burnt alive that way and was in a continual fright lest it should happen to some one whom he knew. We have got a new Sixth Form tutor, a fellow of Queen's, Oxford, who has become a firm friend of mine. He is, like most of my colleagues, very well off and has furnished himself with a splendid library which he allows me to use. I have done a good deal of writing and much reading: my books are costing me less because I am doing a good deal of reviewing for the London papers. One of the strangest effects of the war up to now has been its result upon the world of papers and books. Paper is very expensive and there is great difficulty in getting MSS. printed and bound, but people are all buying books in great numbers, particularly poetry and fiction. Owing to my own smaller successes I have received invitations to meet and to stay with some of the leading writers of the day, which needless to say I have accepted, though if I go I shall have to go without Elspeth, for as soon as it was possible we took her by car from the nursing home in Lewes all the way to her home at Bath, where the doctor says she must stay for some months. I can't face next term without her: I don't know what I shall do and yet I cannot conscientiously expect her to come back to me until she is quite fit to look after the house again. At present she is recovering very slowly and looks dreadfully weak and thin. _May 4, 1915_ When the term was over I did go round to the various houses to which I had been invited and met the queerest people. I was nervous and irritable without Elspeth and never stayed more than a night or two in any one house and kept on rushing back to see how Elspeth was getting on. These Easter holidays have been rather nightmarish because of Elspeth's illness. I could not settle down to anything, and of course we could not go out much because she could not walk. On the other hand, for some reason I was unable to concentrate my attention on writing. Everything was in a state of blur owing to the shock I sustained at her operation. In some degree last term was like the same term two years ago when I was engaged. I tried to hurl myself into my work: I refereed on and coached the junior games, I devised all sorts of schemes to interest my boys in English, I had boys up to tea to remove some of my loneliness, but I was gradually going out of my mind because I had no Elspeth by me to soothe me. And all the time the war has been weighing very heavily upon me. The waste of the flower of this country is frightful. On April 23 young Rupert Brooke died, and we have lost the premier poet of the age before he had had the chance to transmit a quarter of the splendid things that were burning inside him. Somehow I feel his loss more than that of any one I have known. XVII