Collected Letters Volume One: Family Letters 1905–1931

I have just finished ‘Shirley’; which I think better than either ‘Jane Eyre’42 or ‘Villette’. You must read it. What a letter; every sentence seems to begin ‘I’. However, a good healthy dose of egotism is what you need, while you might pass on a little of your superfluous modesty to Bookham. Sorry you’ve returned the old Meistersingers,43 but think the Beka better value.

Yours

Jack

P.S. What is the name of the ‘Galloping Horse’ piece by Chopin,44 I want to make Mrs K. play it.

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W/LP IV: 316-17):

[Gastons

11 May 1915]

Dear Galahad,

Tut! Tut! Must I change your soubriquet? From being the spotless knight of the Grail, are you going to turn philosopher and meet me on my own ground to dispute my shadowy quibbles about the proper sphere of sentiment? Galahad becomes Merlin: who knows but that you may ‘grow besotted of a damosel’, like him, and like him, I may find you when I come home bound fast under a great stone, making a piteous wail to all who pass. And what a relief for the neighbourhood! I think I shall nominate a suitable damosel–say Miss Bradley or Sal Stokes–to besott and bind you. By the way, à propos of Miss Bradley, has she yet recovered (or better still died) from that peculiarly interminable complaint of hers, which prevents the gramaphone being played up at Glenmachen?

But to go back to the sentiment controversy, your objection is nonsense. You argue that sentiment is delightful in art, because it is a part of human nature. Quite right. From that, you deduce that it ought not to be confined to that sphere of human nature where it is delightful–viz. art. That is almost as sensible as to say that trousers are delightful only because they are a part of human clothes: therefore they ought to be worn, not only on the legs, but every where else. Do you maintain that it is a highly commendable and philosophical act to wear trousers, say, on your head? My point is that art is a recepticacle of human thought: sentiment, emotion etc make up that section of human thought which are best suited to fill that definite receptical–and no other. For why, when we have found the best place to keep a thing, should we keep it in other places as well, or instead? By the analogy of the trousers I have shown how ridiculous that would be. As for your idea that to be young, one must be sentimental, let us go into it. Young children are practically devoid of sentiment: they are moved only by bodily pain: young men are a little more sentimental, middle aged ones considerably more so, and old ones the most mawkishly so of all. Sentiment, you see, is a distinct mark of age.

Ah! Having gotten (N.B.) that off our chest, we can proceed to other matters. That little book about Wm. Morris has interested me so much–or re-awakened the old interest–in him, that I have just written up for ‘The Roots of the Mountains’ in Longman’s pocket edition:45 it is about the Goths, and is praised in that book as one of the best of the prose Romances. What is the good of getting Anderson in Everyman?46 It is true, the tales have considerable merit in ipso (that’s Latin and means ‘in themselves’, Ignorant!): but yet, if any book ever needed or was greatly improved by fancy binding, that is it.

The word Soaking-Machine can hardly be styled ‘slang’, being, as it is, coined by myself for private circulation: I thought you knew what it meant. The word ‘soak’ means to sit idly or sleepily doing nothing, and a S’ing machine is [a] place for this operation, i.e. a comfortable seat. Surely I must often have said to you in the course of our walks ‘Let’s find a soaking-machine’ or ‘Here’s a good soaking-machine’?

I despair of making head or tail of any of your gramaphonic talk, where your extraordinary loose and obscure use of words like ‘latter’ etc makes havoc of the sense. Do you mean that you had another record of the Venusburg music, before you heard it with Lohengrin, à l’autre côté? Or do you know what you mean? Or, lastly, do you mean anything at all. I write such enormous letters (which you probably never read to the end) that, from the way Mrs K. keeps looking at me, I believe she fancies it a billet doux. Why didn’t you give me the number of the Polonaise: and what cheek to say ‘I think it is in A Flat’, when a journey downstairs would make sure.

It has been raining for almost 36 hours here, which is not very cheerful. The idea of spelling melodrama ‘mello-drama’ is really quite ‘chic’: I should take out a patent on it, if I were you. I hope you are in good spirits these days, and that the lady of the office window is kind & in good health. Write soon: you’ve know idea how welcome your letters are. By the by, you might tell the girl in Osborne’s to send on the monthly catalogues to my address here, which you can tell her–Columbia, H.M.V., Zono, Beka, are the chief. Valde.

Yours

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 312-13):

[Gastons]

Postmark: 13 May 1915

My dear Papy,

I suppose I must apologise for being a little behindhand with my bulletin; but I confess I don’t understand the remark about ‘punishing accidents’. I am really sorry if you have been nervous, but I thought the telegram would suffice to set you at ease. However, let me assure you here and now that I and my luggage arrived quite safely at Bookham: there has been no question of accidents at all.

Hard times these must be at Leeboro: I have managed to escape the spring gales both at home and here. Thanks for your exertions about my room, which I hope will prove successful in keeping it from shifting. Perhaps ‘key-lashing’ as an extreme measure would be advisable.

I think the idea of permanent Sunday luncheon at the Rectory is excellent:47 perhaps a series of weekly lectures under the title of ‘Anticipation and Realization; their genesis, distinctions and development: together with an excursus on their relations to the Greenshaketything’, would contribute greatly to the gaiety of the occasion. With that disinterested devotion to science, that noble generosity which has always characterised my actions, I not only place the material at your disposal but actually relinquish all claim to authorship. It would be but folly to deny that I experience some natural pangs–but no! Far be it from me to divert the publication of philosophical enlightenment into a channel for the aggrandisment of personal glory. No! Not even when, from the stately halls of Purdysburn48 conferred upon you by a grateful and adoring country, you watch the fame of my achievements heaping its most succulent favours upon your own head–not even then, I say, will a sigh of regret escape from the gullet of self sacrifice.

We had some real summer weather for a few days after I came back, but it has seen fit to pour in torrents today. There is nothing of much interest here except that I have heard a nightingale for the first time. I think I mentioned before that they are as common as sparrows about here–in fact they are rather too numerous. In my conceit (Elizabethan), the song of these birds is one of those few things that does really come up to its reputation: at any rate I never heard anything else at all like it.

‘But enough of these tropes’ (as Bacon says at the end of an essay about Masques and stage plays.):49 let me soon have another letter as long as a Lurgan spade. The coat has arrived.

your loving son,

Jack

P.S. That cat about accidence, I guess has cold feet about jumping, eh?

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W/LP IV: 323-4):

[Gastons

25 May 1915]

Dear Galahad,

B-r-r-r! Behold me coming with locusts & wild honey about my loins (or is it sackcloth & ashes) to kneel and tremble and apologise for my letterless week. However, qui s’excuse, s’accuse, as the French say, and if you want to seek the real author of the mischief you must go up to heaven, and find the four and twenty elders sitting in a row, as St John says, falling on their faces on the sea of glass50 (which must hurt rather but apparently is the ‘thing’ up yonder), and William Morris in white raiment with a halo.

Or, in other words, ‘The Roots of the Mountains’ is the chief cause of my silence. It is not, however, in spite of all this, nearly so good as the first volume of ‘The Well at the World’s End’, although the interest is better sustained throughout. To begin with, I was desparately dissapointed to find that there is nothing, supernatural, faery or unearthly in it at all: in fact, it is more like an ordinary novel. And yet there are many compensations: for, tho’ more ordinary than the ‘Well’, it is still utterly different from any novel you ever read. Apart from the quaint and beautiful old English, which means so much to me, the supernatural element, tho’ it does not enter into the plot, yet hovers on the margin all the time: we have ‘the wildwood wherein dwell wights that love not men, to whom the groan of the children of men is as the scrape of a fiddle-bow: there too abide the kelpies, and the ghosts of them that rest not’,51 and such delightful names as The Dusky Men, The Shadowy Vale, The Shivering Flood, The Weltering Water etc. Another thing I like about it is that the characters are not mediaeval knights but Norse mountain tribes with axe & long-sword instead of horses & lances and so forth. However, though it is worth having and well worth reading, I don’t know if its really worth buying. The next time I get a Morris Romance it will be one of the later ones, as the ‘Roots’ is one of the first, when, apparently, he hadn’t yet found his feet in prose work.

On Saturday last we were over at a little village near here, where Watts the painter lived:52 there is a little gallery, a lovely building, designed by himself, containing some of his quite famous pictures like ‘Orpheus & Euridyce’, ‘Endymion’, ‘Sir Galahad’ etc, which I always thought were in the Louvre or the Tate or some such place. Of course I don’t really quite understand good painting, but I did my best, and succeeded in really enjoying some myself, & persuading the other people that I knew a tremendous lot about them all.

What a grand dialectician, our Little Arthur is!!53 You reply to my elegant tirade against sentiment by stating your old thesis that it ought not to be suppressed, without a single reason. You don’t admit my arguments, and yet make no endeavour to answer them. And because I choose trousers for an example you say that it is ‘very funny’. Moi, I didn’t know trousers were funny. If you do, I picture your progress from the tram to the office something thus: ‘Hullo! Good lord, there’s a fellow with trousers over there! And there’s another. Ha-Ha–Oh this is too screaming. Look–one-two-three more–’ and you collapse in a fit of uncontrollable merriment. Doesn’t this sort of truck fill up the paper? But in point of fact, I’ve lost your last letter, and so don’t quite know what to talk about.

Thanks for carrying out my message to Miss Whatdoyoucallher? about the monthly catalogues, which are now arriving in due order. That’s rather a pretty girl, the H.M.V. infant prodigy 18 year old soprano, but she doesn’t seem to sing anything worth hearing. Hear your brethren are going to join a friend’s ambulance corps, whatever that may be. Give them my congratulations and all the usual nonsense one ought to say on such an occasion. I hope they will get on famously and come back with Victoria crosses and eye-glasses, which seem to be the two goals of military ambition.

It is hot as our future home down below, here, but the country is looking delightful, & I have found one or two more SOAKING MACHINES (I will use that word if I want to) and so am quite comfortable. I hear you have taken to getting heart fits in the middle of the sermon at Saint Marks and coming out–I only wish you’d teach me the trick.

And now, the kind reader, if there still is one, is going to be left in peace. Do write soon, and forgive your suppliant

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 313-14):

[Gastons]

Postmark: 25 May 1915

Dear Papy,

I don’t seem to have heard from you for some time now, but I suppose I am a little behindhand myself. There has been great excitement here this week end: when I came home from Church on Sunday morning I found a note waiting for me to say that Kirk and Mrs. Kirk had gone to Bristol where they had heard by a telegraph that Louis was in hospital. It appears he got a mild species of sun stroke while working with big guns down there at a place called Lydd. It was not very serious–in fact I gather somewhat of a mares nest–and K. is back this evening while Mrs. K. is staying at Bristol for a few days.

We have started our real summer here, and it is pretty warm. How does the weather suit the home farm, where I hope the tragic gardeners are in good form? What between pigeons and gardeners and white Homburg hats, Leeborough must present quite a seasonable spring idyll (with a double ‘l’.)

Mrs. K. and I were over at a place called Compton beyond Guildford on Saturday, where the attraction is a little pottery for fancy tiles and sich, founded by my friend William [Morris], who, as you know, besides being a poet was a wall paper designer, a potter, a hand loom weaver and everything else you can think of. Nearby is a gallery of Watts’s pictures. He, it appears, was one of that same set, and there are a lot of quite swell things there, such as his ‘Paolo and Francesco’, ‘Orpheus and Euridyce’, and ‘Found Drowned’ etc., which I always imagined to be in some big place like the Louvre or Tate. It was quite interesting.

Any news from the Colonel lately? I have not heard from any one except Arthur for a long time now, so do try and raise a letter soon. Or is this silence a result of a literal obedience to my last advice a propos of lectures to the members of the Select Vestry? I hope the doctors don’t think it serious.

There are plenty of nightingales about now, and in fact they are rather a nuisance. I am afraid this is rather a scrappy letter, but I am writing rather late at night, just before going to bed, and am a bit sleepy. I should like to know what is going on at Leeborough just now. I suppose these are the days of no fires, and sunset on the seat behind the laurels, with the crows coming home overhead, and Tim on the look out for wasps.

I hope you are keeping well and cheerful. Write again soon.

your loving,

son,

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 322-3):

[Gastons

28? May 1915]

My dear Papy,

I am sorry to hear that the mental digestion of my parent is so weak, and blame myself for giving it such strong meat. Perhaps a course of ‘Decalettes, pure and simple things’, or nursery rhymes would meet the case. (Now we can proceed to the letter.)

Of course it is a very good thing that Bernagh is contributing to the forces, but one cannot help thinking that a better choice than the ‘Friend’s Ambulance Corps’–which really does sound rather sleepy–might have been made.54 However, I suppose ‘those also serve’55 though the trenches impress the outside spectator more than an ambulance corps. A propos of conscription, I sincerely hope that one of two things may happen. Either that the war may be over before I am eighteen, or that conscription may not come into force before I have volunteered. I shouldn’t fancy going out to meet the others–as a conscript. I see the Daily Mail is being burnt everywhere for advocating the plan.56 How excellent a proof of the necessity of a petty little plan like sending an envelope full of ashes–or most likely it was a woman. There is absolutely no news here, and the weather is very hot. Mrs. K. has now returned again from Bristol where she left Louis getting on all right.

I like your garden picture. I can imagine the whole scene, and especially the conversation with the Greeve’s on the road, we have heard so many like it before. The country at home must be looking delightful now, and I wish I could see it, but most of all the sea. If Bookham were not so far inland it would be delightful too–and indeed to do it justice it is very pretty. The remark about the fates is excellent from a literary point of view, only I don’t like to think of you thinking those sort of things in such a place–and with a white Homburg hat too. And yet I remember that Swinburne has some remark about the impossibility of changing ‘wings for feet, or feet for wings’. I suppose if we Lewis’s are made in that mould of reflective gravity which troubles deepen into melancholy, it is the price which we pay for a thoughtful and feeling mind. About the question of retrospect and anticipation (dangerous word for you, sir), there is a sentence in one of W. Morris’s prose tales that I am reading at present, which tho’ perhaps not strictly in point, is yet well worth remembering in its archaic charm and quaint nobility:–‘Thus then lived this folk in much plenty and ease of life, though not delicately nor desiring things out of measure. They wrought with their hands and wearied themselves: they rested from their toil and feasted and were merry: tomorrow was not a burden unto them, nor yesterday a thing that they would fain forget: life shamed them not, nor did death make them afraid.’57 There is another way of looking at life: impossible it may be in a sophisticated age, and yet I think he would be a happy man who could do so.

What time do my letters reach you in the day? In letter writing one ought to know when and where the other person reads, as it makes more of a semblance to real conversation. I must dry up now.

your loving son,

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

[Gastons

1 June 1915]

Dear Galahad,

Your interesting epistle which I have read with wonder and delight, contains the following gems of Arthurian style

1 ‘I don’t suppose you will object to my coming with me’

2 ‘Read this with discust’

3 ‘I am talking now of sensulity.’

Dear old Galahad! That’s an unusually good budget even for you: I am afraid this ‘sensulity’ of yours–I never saw the word before but I suppose you know what it means–must be beginning to tell on you.

As to your first question, the only holyday I propose to take is a week or so with my relations at Larne, and my father’s offer, which I take to be purely formal, I would not much care to accept. I hope you will be sensible enough to spend your holydays at home with me, seeing each other and talking & going for long walks over the hills, instead of going off to some godless place by the sea. My point is that I should be going to my Aunt’s in any case, and 1 week or so from home is quite enough for me: as well, I don’t think it very decent to leave my father any longer. But don’t let this prevent your going somewhere. All I want to point out is, that my refusal of a joint holyday, is not from a design to avoid you, but because I don’t want to be away from home too long. Of course, if you would condescend to honour Larne with your presence while I am at my Aunt’s, I should be very bucked to see you: but you might be bored. However, we can talk all this over when we meet at the end of July.

Odeon records are the most fascinating and delusive bait on the Gramaphone market. Cheap, classical, performed by good artistes, they present a jolly attractive list: but they wear out in a month. Of course there are exceptions, and I can play you some selections from Lohengrin which I have on that make, and which have worn well. On the whole however, I wouldn’t advise anyone to get Odeon records, as a short-lived record is one of the most dissapointing of things. I foresee, by the way, that your way of getting records is like Jane McNeil’s way of getting books–that is you use a shop like a free library: whenever a record is worn out, back it goes to the shop, and you have a new one in its place. Which reminds me, my monthly catalogues for this month haven’t turned up yet, so you must shout at Miss Thompson.

With reference to your remarks about sensuality–je vous demande pardon–‘sensulity’, I don’t know I am sure, why you have been suffering especially in this way just now. Of course when I was particularly so last term, there was a reason, about whom you heard perhaps more than you wanted. You ought to be past the age of violent attacks of ’EPΩTÍKA (Greek); as well you are Galahad the spotless whose ‘strength is as the strength of ten, because your heart is pure’. Perhaps you would understand now, what you didn’t understand when I started the subject last hols,

Last week I got a copy of that little book of yours on Icelandic Sagas, which I found very interesting, and as a result I have now bought a translation of the ‘Laxdaela Saga’58 in the Temple Classics edition. I never saw a Temple Classic before; did you? In binding, paper, & ‘forma’ (by which I include the aspect of a typical page, its shape, spacing, lettering etc) they are tip top, and justify the boast of ‘elegance’ made in their advertisements. They are, I think, far better value than Everyman’s at the same price.

As to the Saga itself I am very pleased with it indeed: if the brief, simple, nervous style of the translation is a good copy of the original it must be very fine. The story, tho’, like most sagas, it loses unity, by being spread over two or three generations, is thoroughly interesting. Just as it was interesting after the ‘Well at the World’s End’ to read the ‘Morte’, so after the ‘Roots’, a real saga is interesting. I must admit that here again the primitive type is far better than Morris’s reproduction. But that of course is inevitable, just as Homer is better than Vergil.

Sorry to hear my father is so low, but I write to him regularly, and the last was really rather a long and good effort. Hope you’re all well at Bernagh.

Yours

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

[Gastons

8 June 1915]

Dear Galahad,

I seem to have trod on somebody’s corns over this question of a holyday: I expressly said that I did not wish to keep you at home on my account if you wished to go elsewhither. To be brief, my whole answer was that I refused your kind proposal because I was already booked, adding that I should not care to take another holyday in addition to that at Larne. Now what is your grievance–for grievance you must have or you would not write such good grammar. Is it because I won’t throw up my previous invitation in favour of yours? That would be rude. Is it because I will not accompany you on another holyday? That is selfish of you, to expect me to give [up] my fleeting sojourn at Leeborough for your amusement. Is it because I mildly suggested that you need not go for a holyday? There was never any obligation on you to accept such a scheme. And as for your hot weather–je me moque de cette là, it is bitterly cold to-night! How funny that I always prove everything I want in argument with you but never convince you!

Now, having despatched our inevitable weekly dialectical passage-at-arms (by the way, you have never replied to my theory of trousers), we may proceed to the letter. I admit that the ‘I hope you are all well’ is a blot on my character that can hardly be wiped out: I didn’t think I had sunken so low as that, and will try to reform.

I thought you would agree with me about Mansfield park:59 I should almost say it was her best. I don’t remember the names very well, but I think I rather liked Edmund. Do get a Temple Classic. You will bless me ever after, as they are really the best shillings worth on the market. I hope I may prove a false prophet about the Odeon records, and that you will have better luck in them than I. Now that it is drawing a little nearer my return, I begin to hanker again for my gramaphone: but I am not consoled even with the catalogues, so you must stir up the damosel again. I am still at the ‘Laxdaela Saga’ which is as good as ever, and I insist upon your reading it too.

On Saturday I met the prettiest girl I have ever seen in my life (don’t be afraid, you’re not going to have to listen to another love-affair). But it is not her prettiness I wanted to tell you about, but the fact that she is just like that grave movement in the Hungarian Rhapsody (or is it the ‘dance’?) that I love so much.60 Of course to you I needn’t explain how a person can be like a piece of music,–you will know: and if you play that record over, trying to turn the music into a person, you will know just how she looked and talked. Just 18, and off to do some ridiculous warwork, nursing or something like that at Dover of all places–what a shame!