Exeat ended consequently we had a roll-call ‘up– School’ after Abbey. Forbes this morning got on two very pet subjects of his Milton and Hobbes. I am bare- faced enough not to care overmuch for Milton, at least, he does not move me in the same way some other poets do. Mind you, I appreciate his poetry, for instance I think the impression left on one’s mind after reading Lycidas is a very fine one but I cannot recall a single passage not even ‘and let my due feet never fail etc.’ which as it were appeals to one’s inmost soul in the same way as parts of Shakespeare and even perhaps the odes of Keats and Gray’s Elegy. There always seems to me to be an atmosphere of unreality in it and therefore when ‘Dr F’ raves about it and so on, it doesn’t make the slightest impression on me.
This afternoon I went up fields with Tunnecliffe and watched our juniors play Rigaud’s who I am glad to say were defeated 2-1. Tunnecliffe tells me he may be leaving at the end of this term I tried to put in a judicious oar and said what a grievous pity I thought it would be. He seemed pleased. If worse comes to worse, as father said when I told him tonight, we can do with only three monitors.
We had a Commem singing practice ‘up-School’ this evening at 4.30. Gow made me give out papers in the middle, he made one remarks at the end to Ranalow which was very true and that was that the hey of the psalms was too deep for the boys whose voices had just broken and all they could do was to growl. I am in this position I can’t sing it high and if I sing low I make a mumbling noise which is upsetting.
I had to ‘have up’ Eyre tonight, talking in prep. Hobson caught him but we extricated ourselves by dealing with him under the First Offenders Act(!) and let him off. As I remarked to him instead of asking a monitor he preferred to take the risk and forced us to take action. It is disgusting if people won’t keep simple rules, their blood be on their own head, I can’t always manage to let people off on ‘technical grounds’. Eyre upset me by saying ‘thank you’ when I said we had decided to let him off. It appeared to lift a weight from his mind but he ought, I think, to have been tanned, and would have been if we had not had such a disgusting number lately.1
1 He certainly ought to have been for he has told me since that instead of this being his first offence he had been had up by Gordon Reed and let off the term before and consequently was not unnaturally pleased at getting off again in this unexpected manner!! L.E.T. 15/7/1912