I have a
horror of the sporting public-school type, the good-humoured,
robust fellow, who does his work and fills his spare time with
games, and thinks intellectual things, and artistic interests, and
emotion, and sympathy, moonshine and rot. Such people live a
wholesome enough life; they make good soldiers, good officials,
good men of business. But they are woefully complacent and self-
satisfied. The schools develop a Spartan type, and I want Alec to
be an Athenian. But the experiment will have to be made, because a
man is at a disadvantage in ordinary life if he has not the public
school bonhomie, courtesy, and common sense. I must try to keep the
other side alive, and I don't despair of doing it.
Meantime we are a very contented household, in spite of the fact
that now, if ever, is the time for me to make my mark as a writer,
and I have to pass all the opportunities that offer. On the other
hand, this is the point at which one sees, in the history of
letters, so many writers go to pieces. They suddenly find, after
their first great success, that they have arrived, by a tortuous
and secret path, at being a sort of public man. They are dazzled by
contact with the world.
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