Collected Letters Volume One: Family Letters 1905–1931

The boy himself was at Campbell before he came here, and I can still remember enough to pick up acquaintance in common and to criticise ‘the old place’. I hear to my surprise that Joey89 is a ‘knut’ cricketer in his House Eleven: one never hears these tit-bits at home.

It is a good deal warmer here than in Ireland and my cold is consequently getting better–you will be relieved to hear. Kirk is still going strong and Bookham is looking its prettiest. Any sign of the new overcoat yet? But of course it will not really be needed till much later in the year. Tell me too if you hear anything from W. I must now stop and go to bed, which I feel justified in doing because I am one up on you in the way of letters.

your loving

son Jack

P.S. Don’t forget to tell me when you write, how that cold of yours is. Jack.

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W/LP V: 21-2):

[Gastons

5 October 1915]

My dear Galahad,

I can’t really see why you have any more right to grouse at my not writing than I at you, but we will let it pass. And in the meantime, what do you think? It is a bit thick when one has fled from Malvern to shun one’s compeers in the seclusion of Surrey wilds, to be met by a damned fellow pupil of my own age–and sex!90 Isn’t it the limit? Moreover he is a hopeless fellow with whom I despair of striking up any friendship that can be at all amusing–you know, the usual sort with absolutely no interest in any of the things that matter. Luckily, however he spends the greater part of his time taking special classes at Leatherhead, so that I still have my afternoon walk alone. Indeed, I suppose it is easier to put up with one philistine at Bookham than with five-hundred at Malvern, but still, the thing is a nuisance on which I had not counted.

I wish indeed that I had been with you at Portrush, of which your description sounds most attractive. I once visited Dunluce Castle years ago when I was staying at ‘Castle Rock’, but being a kid did not of course appreciate it as much as I would now.

It is very annoying that after waiting all the holydays for those Columbia records, I should just manage to miss them: mind you tell the girl to send me on the monthly lists of Zono, Columbia & H.M.V. I noticed by the way that the Zono list contains an attractive record with the ‘Seranade’ and ‘Church Scene’ from Faust.91 Do you remember the latter–that magnificent duet outside the Church, with organ accompaniment where Gretchen is hunted about the stage with Mephisto behind her? You must hear it and tell me your impressions.

I thought you would enjoy ‘Shirley’. Don’t you see now what I meant when I said that love, apart from physical feelings, was quite different to friendship? If not you must have a brain like a cheese. There is not really much resemblance either between Louis & Gordon or Shirley & Lily. Can you imagine G. behaving to Lily the way Louis does at times to Shirley? I am afraid that, much as I like him, G. hasn’t got it in him. Lily of course is not unlike S., but not so much of a ‘grande dame’, if you know what I mean.92 When I said that K.[elsie Ewart] was like a valkyrie I meant of course in her appearance–or rather in her open-air appearance. When however you see her in artificial light, both in clothing & natural colouring she is like some thoughtful, exquisite piano piece of Chopin’s–you’d know which better than I.

By the way, tell your sister that I have already written to thank her for the boot-bags, and that when the love she says she’s sending arrives I will write and thank her for it too.

I have been reading the ‘Faerie Queen’ in Everymans both here and at home ever since I left you and am now half way thro’ Book II.93 Of course it has dull and even childish passages, but on the whole I am charmed, and when I have made you read certain parts I think you will appreciate it too.

Talking about poetry, if you have not done so already, go over to Little Lea and borrow Swinburne’s ‘Poems and Ballads’ 2nd Series at once. Read ‘The Forsaken Garden’, ‘At Parting’ (I think that is the name, it begins ‘For a day and a night love stayed with us, played with us’)94 ‘Triads’ ‘The Wasted Vigil’ and ‘At a month’s End’. The latter especially you must read from end to end as a commentary on the love parts of ‘Shirley’, only that in this case the man who tried to tame some such fierce & wonderful character failed instead of succeeding. Then you will relish all the lovely verses at the end, especially that beginning ‘Who strives to snare in fear and danger / Some supple beast of fiery kin’.95 Then tell me your impressions. Hope this hasn’t bored you.

I am jolly glad to hear that you are at last starting with Dr Walker96 and shall expect to find great ‘doings’ in your musical line when I come back. Write soon and don’t forget the catalogues

Yours

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

[Gastons

12 October 1915]

My dear Galahad,

I am frightfully annoyed. I have just been to Guildford to hear Ysaye97 and enjoyed it no more than I do the barking of a dog. The apalling thought comes over me that I am losing by degrees my musical faculty: already, as you know, I cannot enjoy things that used to drive me wild with delight, and I suppose in the course of time I shall become absolutely insensible–just like Henry Stokes or my brother or anyone else. There was also a woman called Stralia, a soprano, who sang one lovely thing from ‘Madame Butterfly’98 and lots of stuff I didn’t understand. I havenot the faintest idea what Ysaye played, and I never want to hear it again. I listened as hard as I could, shutting my eyes and trying in vain to concentrate my attention, but it was all just meaningless sound. Of course violin solos were never much in my line but even so, it should not be so bad as this. Now I suppose I have lost your sympathy forever and am set down–who knows but it may be rightly–as a Goth and philistine. But it really is torture to feel things going out of you like that. Perhaps after all, the taste in music developed by a gramaphone is a bad, artificial, exotic one that dissapears after a certain point…The Lord knows!

You ask me how I spend my time, and though I am more interested in thoughts and feelings, we’ll come down to facts. I am awakened up in the morning by Kirk splashing in his bath, about 20 minutes after which I get up myself and come down. After breakfast & a short walk we start work on Thucydides–a desperately dull and tedious Greek historian99 (I daresay tho’, you’d find him interesting) and on Homer whom I worship. After quarter of an hour’s rest we go on with Tacitus till lunch at 1.I am then free till tea at 4.30: of course I am always anxious at this meal to see if Mrs K. is out, for Kirk never takes it. If she is I lounge in an arm chair with my book by the fire, reading over a leisurely and bountiful meal. If she’s in, or worse still has ‘some people’ to tea, it means sitting on a right angled chair and sipping a meagrue allowance of tea and making intelligent remarks about the war, the parish and the shortcomings of every-ones servants. At 5, we do Plato and Horace, who are both charming, till supper at 7.30, after which comes German and French till about 9. Then I am free to go to bed whenever I like which is usually about 10.20.

As soon as my bed room door is shut I get into my dressing gown, draw up a chair to my table and produce–like Louis Moore, note book and pencil. Here I write up my diary for the day, and then turning to the other end of the book devote myself to poetry, either new stuff or polishing the old. If I am not in the mood for that I draw faces and hands and feet etc for practice. This is the best part of the day of course, and I am usually in a very happy frame of mind by the time I slip into bed. And talking about bed, I wish you and your family would have the goodness to keep out of my dreams. You remember my telling you that I dreamed that you and Lily & I were walking along North Street when I saw a ghost but you & she didn’t? That was at Port Salon. Well, last night found the same 3 walking somewhere in town, only this time the place had been captured by the Germans. Everyone had escaped and we were hurrying along in terror through the deserted streets with the German soldiers always just round the corner, going to catch us up and do something terrible. Dreams are queer things.

You ask me whether I have ever been in love: fool as I am, I am not quite such a fool as all that. But if one is only to talk from firsthand experience on any subject, conversation would be a very poor business. But though I have no personal experience of the thing they call love, I have what is better–the experience of Sapho,100 of Euripides of Catullus101 of Shakespeare of Spenser of Austen of Bronte of, of–anyone else I have read. We see through their eyes. And as the greater includes the less, the passion of a great mind includes all the qualities of the passion of a small one. Accordingly, we have every right to talk about it. And if you read any of the great love-literature of any time or country, you will find they all agree with me, and have nothing to say about your theory that ‘love=friendship+sensual feelings’. Take the case I mentioned before. Were Louis & Shirley ever friends, or could they ever be? Bah! Don’t talk twaddle. On the contrary, the mental love may exist without the sensual or vice versa, but I doubt if either could exist together with friendship. What nonsense we both talk, don’t we? If any third person saw our letters they would have great ‘diversion’ wouldn’t they?

In the meantime, why have no catalogues reached me yet? By the time this reaches you, you will I hope have read your course of Swinburne I mapped out, and can send me your views. So glad you too like the ‘Faerie Queen’, isn’t it great? I have been reading a horrible book of Jack London’s called ‘The Jacket’.102 If you come across [it] anywhere, don’t read it. It is about the ill-treatment in an American prison, and has me quite miserabl. Write soon.

Yours

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 24-5):

[Gastons]

Postmark: 22 October 1915

My dear Papy,

The state of our library at Leeborough must be perfectly apalling: how such a collection of ignorances and carelessnesses could have got together on the shelves of our room passes my comprehension. As well, where is the beautiful quarto edition? What is a quarto? I don’t believe you have the vaguest idea, and should not be surprised if the edition in question is merely an 8vo., (-no, that doesn’t mean ‘in eight volumes’, though I too thought so once.) In fact there are a whole lot of things in your letter that I don’t understand. What are ‘vagrom’ men might I ask? I have consulted all the dictionaries at Gastons and failed to find the word. ‘But enough of these toys’ as Verulam remarks.103

Kirk has just called my attention to an amusing article in the papers which I daresay you have read.104 It appears that a Radley boy who had been allowed home for a day to see his brother who was going to the front, overstayed his leave by permission of his father, and on his return was flogged by the Head. If you remember, there was good reason because it turned out that the journey was out of joint or something, so that the fellow couldn’t get home and back in time. Moreover, the father sent a telegram. Well the boy and the father have brought an action, and now we come to the point. One of the witnesses called by the schoolmaster to defend his conduct was a certain Canon Sydney Rhodes James, sometime headmaster of Malvern. As Kirk points out, it is amusing to see that he alone was picked out of all England to defend a pedagogue from the boy he had flogged: so far he ‘outshone millions tho’ bright’. Unfortunately the judge, who I fancy must have known his man, decided that Jimmy’s theories of school management would be off the point, and did not call him. The evidence I suppose would have consisted in an illuminated discourse on ‘the young squirm’s’ conduct.

The chief amusement here is the Zeppelins. We saw the bombardment of Waterloo station going on that last time they were here: at least that is what we were told it was. All you could see were some electrical flashes in the sky caused by the bombs, and of course it was too far away to hear anything. Now that people know that they are about, we are always hearing them going over at nights, but it usually turns out to be a motor byke in the distance. Once we heard the noise of the thump of a hammer at Guildford, and people said that was the dropping of bombs, but I have my doubts.

Isn’t Jimmy good this week in Punch? I am glad to hear that Lily and Gordon are not going out of the neighbourhood, as they would make a bad gap. The sponge etc. must be having a long journey, but I hope they are like the mills of the Gods.105

your loving

son Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 31):

[Gastons]

Postmark: 11 November 1915

My dear Papy,

As sole companion on a desert island, as a friend to talk to on the night before one was hanged, or, as in the present case, for a helper when one lies stunned in a muddy road, whom would we choose rather than Bill Patterson?106 Ah! Bill. He is a joy for ever, is he not?–to himself. When you talk about the collision as you do, I take it to be mostly codotta: if I thought otherwise, I would be seriously alarmed. In any case, you must not allow this tendency to dissipation to run away with you at a time like the present when one sees the angel of death flapping his wings from the shores of Totting to hordes that dwell in the skirts of the rising sun, and things of that sort–instead of which, you go about indulging in debauches at the dentist’s. Is this not worthy of the severest censure?

I see no reason to congratulate the Times on its recruiting supplement in any way, nor the country on the necessity (which it allows to remain) for such publications being made. I am afraid that we must admit that Kipling’s career as a poet is over. The line to which you refer is the merest prose, as well as very bad metre. And why is the word ‘stone’ introduced, except to rhyme with o’erthrown?107 On the other hand, if his career be over, we may say that it is creditably over, and if I, for one, had such a record of poetry behind me I should be well satisfied. I conceive that Kipling is one of those writers who has the misfortune in common with Longfellow, of always being known and liked for his worst works. I mean his poetry to the agaraioi means merely the Barrack Room Ballads,108 which, however original and clever, are not poetry at all. ‘The brightest jewels in his crown’ as the hymnal would say, are, I suppose, ‘The Brushwood boy’,109 ‘Puck of Pook’s Hill’, ‘The jungle book’ and various of the scattered poems, among which I should place first the dedication piece about ‘my brother’s spirit’ and ‘gentlemen unafraid’. ‘The last rhyme of true Thomas’, ‘The first and last Chantry’ and several others which I forget.110 He is less of a scholar than Newbolt,111 but he is also freer from conventional and obvious sentiment: his metres are often too clever. With it all however, I think he will survive, if any of the present crew do. Except Yeats, I don’t know of any other who is in the least likely to.

I myself have been reading this week a book by a man named Love Peacock, of whom I had not heard, but who seems to be famous. He was a contemporary of Lamb, Hazlitt, Byron etc., and an intimate friend of Shelly. The book is a farcical novel called ‘Headlong Hall’,112 and very amusing.

As to the overcoat, I agree with you that it will be better to leave the business till the holydays, as the effort to make Bamford understand anything at all under any circumstances whatever is by no means child’s play. I hope you have not any urgent desire for the other one. According to my computations the half term was about three days ago. As I must now go and add to the glories of Greek literature by a very choice fragment of Attic prose, good night.

your loving son,

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 22):

[Gastons

15? November 1915]

My dear Papy,

The youth’s name is Terence Ford, and I know nothing more about him except that he lived in the suburbs of Manchester during his father’s lifetime. As I never see anything of him except on Sundays–for he spends all day at Leatherhead–I am quite reconciled to his presence and even enjoy hearing his talk about Campbell, which makes me by contrast more sensible of my present good luck. By the way, who is your friend Lord Bacon? I don’t remember any such name in English literature: in fact the name Bacon itself never occurs, to my knowledge, except as the family name of Lord Verulam. (Ahh! A body blow, eh?).

I am sorry to hear about your gums. Are you sure your dental artist is a competent man? A change of advisers often works wonders in medical matters. I always envy the Chinese for their excellent arrangement of paying the doctor while in health and, on falling ill, ceasing it until a cure has been effected. Perhaps you might suggest such an arrangement to the dentist.

I am still busy with my ‘heavy winged Pegasus’ as you call Spenser, and still find him delightful. He is a very lotus land, a garden of Proserpine to people who like pure romance and the ‘stretched metre of an antique song’.113 You should give him another trial some time, though not in our abridged edition which leaves out a lot of valuable stuff. I have also been reading in library copies, Schopenhauer’s ‘Will and idea’,114 and Swinburne’s ‘Erectheus’ which is another tragedy on Greek lines like ‘Atalanta’,115 though not so good in my opinion. Schopenhauer is abstruse and depressing, but has some very interesting remarks on the theory of music and poetry.

Kirk, I need hardly say, is strong on him, and will talk on the subject for hours–by the way, the real subject to get him on just now is the Mons angels.116 You should drop him a cue in your next letter: you know–‘a man was telling me the other day that he had seen with his own eyes’ or something of the kind. And while we are on the subject of the war, I am sure you have noticed the excellent blank verse poem in this week’s ‘Punch’ entitled ‘Killed in action’.117 I read it with great pleasure, and thought at the time that it would appeal to you.

The weather here is a perfect joke, warmer than July, bright sunshine and gentle breezes. Personally I have had quite enough summer, and should not be sorry to bid it goodbye, though Kirk persistently denounces this as a most unnatural state of mind. I am rather curious to know what the new case of books at home contains. Tell Arthur if you see him, that there is a letter owing to me.

your loving

son Jack

P.S. Was there any talk about Lord Bacon?

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W/LP V: 23-4):

[Gastons

16 November 1915]

My Furious Galahad,

Horace has pointed out that if you buy an article after knowing all its defects, you have no right to quarrel with the seller if you are dissatisfied.118 In the present case, since I told you how slack I was, and openly admitted that I could not promise to keep up a regular correspondance, you have no ground for grumbling if you find that I was speaking the truth. Should you, however, show any disposition to a brief exercise in that fascinating art, I have another excellent excuse: your letters are always shorter than mine: so much so that if I remain silent for a week or so, my amount of letter-writing for the term will still be a good bit bigger than yours.

As a matter of fact I have really had nothing to say, and thought it better to write nothing than to try and pump up ‘conversation’–in the philistine sense of the word. I have read nothing new and done nothing new for ages. I am still at the Faerie Queene, and in fact have finished the first volume, which contains the first three books. As I now think it far too good a book to get in ordinary Everyman’s I am very much wondering what edition would be the best. Of course I might get my father to give me that big edition we saw in Mullans’ for a birthday or Xmas present: but then I don’t really care for it much. The pictures are tolerable but the print, if I remember, rather coarse (you know what I mean) and the cover detestable. Your little edition is very nice, but rather too small, and not enough of a library-looking book. How much is it, and what publisher is it by? I believe I have heard you say that it can be got in the same edition as your ‘Odyssey’, but then that is rather risky, because the illustrations might be hopeless. Write, anyway, and tell me your advice.

By the way those catalogues have never come yet; you might wake the girlinosborne’s up. I hope you are right about my music not being a whim: could you imagine anything more awful than to have all your tastes gradually fade away? Not a bad subject for a certain sort of novel! And talking about music, how did you enjoy Ysaye:119 you don’t say in your letter. Yes: his brother did play when they were at Guildford: one of his things was a Liebestraum by Liszt, which I did appreciate to a certain extent. Mrs K. has got a new book of Grieg’s with a lot of things in it that I am just longing to hear you play: the best is ‘Auf den Bergen’,120 do you know it? A lovely scene on mountains by the sea (I imagine) and belled cattle in the distance, and the snow and pines and blue sky, and blue, still, sad water. There’s a sort of little refrain in it that you would love. You must try and get hold of it.

Since finishing the first volume of Spenser I have been reading again ‘The Well at the World’s End’, and it has completely ravished me. There is something awfully nice about reading a book again, with all the half-unconscious memories it brings back. ‘The Well’ always brings to mind our lovely hill-walk in the frost and fog–you remember–because I was reading it then. The very names of chapters and places make me happy: ‘Another adventure in the Wood Perilous’, ‘Ralph rides the Downs to Higham-on-the-Way’, ‘The Dry Tree’, ‘Ralp reads in a book concerning the Well at the World’s End’.

Why is it that one can never think of the past without wanting to go back? We were neither of us better off last year than we are now, and yet I would love it to be last Xmas, wouldn’t you? Still I am longing for next holydays too: do you know they are only five weeks off.

By the way, I hope you have read ‘your Swinburne’ by now: anyway, when you go up to night to the room I know so well you must go and have a look at the ‘Well at the W’s End’. Good-night.

Yours

Jacks

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 33):

[Gastons]

Postmark: 19 November 1915

My dear Papy,

By all accounts I have missed a treat by being lost in a Surrey village during these recent ‘elemental disturbances’ as the man in Bret Harte says–or was it Mark Twain? I love this sort of melodrama in weather, and a night when the cross-channel boats can’t put out is just in my line. Of course we never have any real wind here. The winter however has now set in for good, and ever since Monday there has been a hard frost with a little snow. They have been glorious days all the same, mostly without a cloud in the sky, and a blazing sun that is bright and dazzling but quite cold–grand weather for walking. I love the afternoons now, don’t you? There is something weird and desolate about the perfectly round orange coloured sun dropping down clear against a slatey grey sky seen through bare trees that pleases me better than all those cloud-cities and mountains that we used to see in summer over the Lough in the old days when the crows were going home. There never seem to be such sunsets latterly, do there?

Your friend Byron is not (I devoutly hope) immortal, though his poem about the Assyrians unfortunately is.121 It shares that rather deluding longevity with about half a dozen other nightmares such as ‘The village clock has just struck four’, ‘It was the schooner Hesperus’, ‘Under the spreading chestnut tree’122 etc.: to which list one might add the poems of Ovid, the novels of Dickens, and the complete works of Wordsworth.

Many thanks for the welcome postal order. Talking about money, when you next write to Warnie you might remind him of a business matter which seems to be rather hanging fire, and tell him that I am not only like Barkis, willing but also waiting.123 I have acted upon your excellent advice and at last written to Arthur. There is, as yet, no answer, but in the meantime I am investing in a very good suit of sackcloth reach-me-downs and a dozen bottles of best quality ashes.