A Schoolmaster's Diary: Being Extracts from the Journal of Patrick Traherne, M.A., Sometime Assistant Master at Radchester and Marlton.Traherne, Patrick
General
A Schoolmaster's Diary: Being Extracts from the Journal of Patrick Traherne, M.A., Sometime Assistant Master at Radchester and Marlton.
Traherne, Patrick
Traherne, Patrick, 1885-1917
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account