Collected Letters Volume One: Family Letters 1905–1931

113 William Shakespeare, Sonnet 17 (1609).

114 Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea (1883-6).

115 Algernon Charles Swinburne, Erechtheus (1876); Atalanta in Calydon (1865).

116 The Battle of Mons, on the Western Front, began on 23 August 1914. For the whole of that day the British held the line against the Germans with greatly inferior numbers. A legend began within two weeks of the battle that an angel had appeared ‘on the traditional white horse and clad all in white with flaming sword’. Facing the advancing Germans the angel ‘forbade their further progress’. Martin Gilbert, First World War (1994), p. 58.

117 ‘Killed in Action’ by R.C.L. is found in Punch, Vol. CXLIX (13 November 1915), p. 310.

118 Horace, Epistles, 2. 2. 17-19.

119 This is Théo Ysaÿe (1865-1918), a pianist and composer, brother of Eugène.

120 ‘Auf den Bergen’ is a piano solo from Edvard Grieg’s Folkelivsbilleder (1872).

121 George Gordon, Lord Byron, The Destruction of Sennacherib (1815), l. 1: ‘The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold’.

122 ‘It was the schooner Hesperus’ is l. 1 of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Wreck of the Hesperus (1839); ‘Under the spreading chestnut tree’ is l.1 of Longfellow’s The Village Blacksmith (1839).

123 Barkis is the character in Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield (1849-50) who sent a message by David to Clara Peggotty that ‘Barkis is willin’.’

124 Albert had been appointed a church warden at St Mark’s for the third time.

125 W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, The Pirates of Penzance (1879), Act II.

126 Albert replied on 26 November 1915: ‘I was glad to get your kind and sympathetic letter. I have done as you would wish. I have just written to Warnie to say that inasmuch as he says he will not get leave again until the end of the war, I have altered my decision and have written to you to hold yourself in readiness to leave when he calls. I shall write to K. and send your travelling money later. You may tell K. what is impending if you like’ (LP V: 34).

127 Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde, bk. V, l. 585: ‘Men mighte a book make of it, lik a storie!’

128 Virgil, Aeneid, IV, 298: ‘Incline to fear where all was safe…’

129 Andrew Lang, History of English Literature (1912).

130 John William Mackail, Springs of Helicon: A Study in the Progress of English Poetry from Chaucer to Milton (1909); The Life of William Morris, 2 vols. (1899).

131 i.e. Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women and Troilus and Criseyde are better than his most popular work, The Canterbury Tales (composed 1387-1400).

132 Gilbert Murray, A History of Ancient Greek Literature (1897). Murray (1866-1957) was Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford 1908-36, and a distinguished translator of Greek plays.

133 People who frequent the agora (market place), i.e. the common people.

1916

Jack was at Little Lea when, on 8 January, The Times published the Military Service Act, which was expected to come into effect soon. In a section concerning the ‘Obligation of unmarried men to serve’ it stated that included among those who would have to serve were: ‘Every male British subject who, on the fifteenth day of August nineteen hundred and fifteen–(a) was ordinarily resident in Great Britain; and (b) had attained the age of eighteen years and had not attained the age of forty-one years; and (c) was unmarried or was a widower without children dependent on him’ (p. 8).

In a ‘Service Act Proclamation published in The Times on 4 February 1916 King George V ordered that the Military Service Act come into operation on 10 February 1916. Even then, Jack had reason at this time to think he might not be required to serve. The Times of 8 January had published, along with the Military Service Act, notification of ‘A Bill to make provisions with respect to Military Service in connection with the present war’ (p. 8). ‘Exemptions,’ it declared, would include ‘Men who are resident in Great Britain for the purpose only of their education or for some other purpose.’

While the Military Service Act went into effect on 10 February, the question of exemptions for Irishmen was debated by the Government for many months, during which time Jack did not know whether he would qualify for exemption or not. By the time it was clear that exemption would apply to him, and that he was not required to serve, he had decided that he should serve nevertheless.

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 48-9):

[Gastons]

Postmark: 31 January 1916

My dear Papy,

One of the small consolations that a long experience of the continual change from term to holidays and vice versa brings, is the ability to settle down at once. I feel now as if I had been here for several months and have quite got into the old routine again. Everything at Bookham is of course in statu quo–I believe it would still be a hundred years hence. It is beautiful spring weather, as it was at home when I left you, and if only one could have that matutinal cup of tea, life would have nothing more to offer.

I spent the afternoon last Saturday in town, at the Shaftesbury, where there was a matinée of Carmen:1 the singing was very poor, especially our friend the bass, whose rendition–I fancy that is the correct term–of the Toreador song was a thing to make the angels weep. Carmen herself however was quite good, and the tenor tolerable, so that on the whole I might have fared worse. With the opera itself, apart from the performance, I was very pleased. Just about the right percentage of the tunes was (it ought to be ‘was’ not ‘were’ oughtn’t it?) familiar to me, and the ones which I had not heard before ‘discoveries’.

This afternoon I have been a long walk to a perfectly delightful village2 that I had never found out before, and I wish you could see it. It is rather like some of the places described in the ‘Upton Letters’ only more so. One old house–a thing as thick as a cottage and a good deal longer than Leeborough, all built on different levels, bears the legend ‘1666’. The best things however are the dragons and other monsters on the roof. Another most excellent codotta is the White Horse where you can drink tea, and a parlour that was used in the coaching days, and has not, by the look of it, been furnished since. If only they would dust the butter it would be quite ideal.

The ‘Faerie Queen’ which I told Mullens to send here as soon as it came has now arrived, and I am very pleased with it. If a bill comes from Osbornes for those records, please send it on at once as I have a cheque of W’s. made out (or whatever the phrase is) to T.E. Osborne to pay it withal. However, no bill ought to arrive as I am asking Arthur to tell the ‘young person’ to send it here. And by the by, talking about cheques, I am not sure whether I asked you to take the cheque out of my cash box in the little end room and turn it into money some time before next holidays. Would you please do this? Hoping you are carrying on all right.

your loving

son Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (LP V: 50-1):

[Gastons

1 February 1916]

Dear little Archie,

Oh Gods of friendship, has such devotion ever been witnessed as mine! I am just at the beginning of a heavenly new book, I am just at the end of a long day’s work, and yet I spend my spare time in writing letters. I hope you duly appreciate the sacrifice of a fresh young heart offered up on the savage altar of3–well to get on.

On the Saturday4 in London I wasted 7/6 on going to a matinee of Carmen. There was no one in the cast of whom I had heard before and no one whom I want to hear again. Carmen herself was tolerable, but the rest, especially the Toreador, were fiendish. With the opera too I was awfully disappointed, although there is certainly a lot of beautiful music in it–particularly in the preludes to the acts (oh, one thing was good–the orchestra: they played that intermezzo that I have exquisitely) and in the scene among the mountains. But one does get so sick of all the tedious melodrama, all the blustering orchestration, and sticky tunes of good old fashioned operas. Then too there are a pair of villains in it who have a ghastly resemblance in their clownings to that other pair in Fra Diavolo–do you remember those awful creatures? So on the whole I was very fed up with this world by the time I reached dear Bookham. I find–of course–my beloved fellow pupil.

Since then I have been cheered up by the arrival of my new ‘Faerie Queen’ in the red leather Everyman. I can’t see why you so dislike this edition: and if you have noticed the effect that their backs have when two or three are together in a shelf I am sure you do really appreciate them. I have read a good chunk of this and have also re-read Jane Eyre from beginning to end–it is a magnificent novel. Some of those long, long dialogues between her and Rochester are really like duets from a splendid opera, aren’t they? And do you remember the description of the night she slept on the moor and of the dawn? You really lose a lot by never reading books again.

The other book–which I am denying myself to write to YOU, yes YOU of all people–is from the library by Blackwood called ‘Uncle Paul’.5 Oh, I have never read anything like it, except perhaps the ‘Lore of Proserpine’. When you have got it out of your library and read how Nixie and Uncle Paul get into a dream together and went to a primaeval forest at dawn to ‘see the winds awake’ and how they went to the ‘Crack between yesterday and tomorrow’6 you will agree with me.

It was most annoying not getting my new records before I came back, wasn’t it? Tell the girlinosbornes–the next time you go to see Olive–to send the bill for them to my address here at once. I do hope my Caruso7 ‘E lucevan e stella’8 is going to be a success. Talking about that thing, does it convey anything to you? To me it seems to be just abstract melody. The actual scene I believe is a man on the battlement of a castle writing a letter–but you have probably read Tosca in that beastly potted opera book.

I was interested in what you said about the ‘Brut’.9 You ought to get it in Everyman.

Yours

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 51-2):

[Gastons

6? February 1916]

My dear Papy,

Thanks very much for the cheque, which I enclose, signed as you told me. I am afraid however that I must trouble you again: one of my pairs of shoes has finally given out ‘beyond the hope of uttermost recall’ and I want you please to get me a new pair, or else tell Annie to do so. The mysterious piece of paper which I am sending is a map of my foot so that the knave in the shop will know what size to give you. I am very sorry if this is a nuisance, and will take care next term to set out well equipped with hats, coats, shoes and other garments, like the men in the furnace.

That business about Warnie’s commission, though of course important in itself, is as you say a nice example of war office methods. If big things are managed in the same way as these small ones, it promises well for the success of the war doesn’t it? Another thing also struck me: we have often wondered and laughed at some of the people who have commissions. It becomes even funnier when one reads the formula, ‘reposing special trust and confidence in your loyalty, courage, and good conduct’: we remember that the Jarvey10 who drove the Colonel up to the office last time was one of those who hoped soon to enjoy this ‘special trust and confidence.’

By the way, you should get that ‘Spirit of Man’, Bridge’s anthology,11 that everyone is talking about. Mrs. K. has it from the library at present: it is one of the prettiest little books I have seen for a long time, and there is a lot of good stuff in it. One ‘nice point’ is that the names of the authors are printed at the end of the volume and not under each piece: it is very amusing–and somewhat humiliating–to see how many you know.

This business about matriculation and enlisting is ‘very tiresome’, as the Mikado said.12 Are you [sure] that it applies to those who are under age, and who are also Irish? If so, as you say, we must think it over together. Of course in dealing with such a point we must always remember that a period of something more than a year elapses between the time of joining up and one’s getting any where near the front.13 However, it can wait until we are together at Easter.

And now my dear parent, as the time alloted to correspondence is drawing to its close, I fear I must relinquish–or in other words it is time for Church. You will observe that this is one of those houses where we rise so early on Sundays that there is a long interval between breakfast and our Calvinistic exercises.

your loving son,

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (LP V: 53-4):

[Gastons

8 February 1916]

My dear Arthur,

You lucky devil! It makes me very envious to hear of all these good things going on at home while I am languishing in the wilds of Surrey.

I am surprised to hear that you never heard of Barkworth,14 as I have seen his name in the musical part of the Times and other papers: I believe he is one of the promising musicians of the day–that is if there are ever going to be English musicians and an English school of opera. Personally I should have been very much interested to hear his ‘Romeo and Juliet’. If the only fault is that it is blustering, you might say the same of the ‘Flying Dutchman’15 or the ‘Valkyrie’, mightn’t you? What did poor Willie Jaffe think of it? (I suppose you mean him by W.J.–) Hardly in his line I should fancy. I am sure ‘Pagliaci’ and ‘Cavalleria’ were lovely, and I would especially like to have seen ‘Rigoletto’, because I know the plot.16

I quite agree with you that a gramophone spoils one for hearing opera: the real difficulty is to find for what a gramophone does not spoil one. True, it improves your musical taste and gives you opportunities of hearing things that you might otherwise never know: but what is the use of that when immediately afterwards it teaches you to expect a standard of performance which you can’t get, or else satiates you with all the best things so that they are stale before you have heard them once on the stage? Or in other words, like everything else it is a disappointment, like every other pleasure it just slips out of your hand when you think you’ve got it. The most striking example of this is the holiday which one looks forward to all the term and which is over and gone while one is still thinking how best to enjoy it.

By all this you will gather that I am in a bad temper: well, so I am–that bloody little beast my fellow pupil has sneaked upstairs for a bath and I can now hear him enjoying it and I know there will be no hot water left for me. They only raise hot water here about once a month.

However. Let us proceed: do you read Ruskin at all? I am sure you don’t. Well I am reading a book of his at present called ‘A joy for ever’,17 which is charming, though I am not sure you would care for it. I also still employ the week ends with the Faerie Queene. I am now in the last three books, which, though not much read as a rule, are full of good things. When I have finished it, I am going to get another of Morris’ romances, or his translation of one of the sagas–perhaps that of Grettir the Strong.18 This can be got either for 5/-in the Library edition (my ‘Sigurd the Volsung’19 one) or for 3/6 in the ‘Silver Library’ (like my ‘Pearl Maiden’).20 Which would you advise?

By the way, why is your letter dated Wednesday? It has arrived here this evening–Tuesday–am I to understand that you posted it tomorrow, or that you have been carrying it about in your pocket for a week?

Isn’t it awful about Harding? I hear from my father that Hope is going out.21 I suppose that by this time the jeunes mariés have got into Schomberg.22 Why are your letters always so much shorter than mine? Therefore I stop.

Yours,

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 56-7):

[Gastons]

Postmark: 26 February 1916

My dear Papy,

‘Well I calls it ’ard’ as your friend used to say of the ’alf hour: I am accustomed, nay I am hardened to missing opera companies: but that I should be exiled in the wilds of England while Robin W. Gribbon and Lucius O’Brien23 are visiting Belfast–this is too utterly all but. But why might I ask are these nonconformist canals reciting in the school house of Saint Mark?24 What have they to do with us? Let them get behind us. Joking apart, one might get a ‘running river of innocent merriment’ out of their efforts, ‘extremely stretched and conned with cruel pains’. Perhaps however you have your own reasons for reverencing the school house. Is it not the theatre of an immortal rendition of that ‘powerful’ role of Gesler,25 and also of an immortal brick-dropping re an immortal preacher? There too the honey tongued tenor of Garranard–but we will draw a veil over the painful scene.

There is a certain symmetry of design in your list of books, a curiosa felicitas, a chaste eloquence and sombre pathos in the comments, ‘See no. 40’ and ‘see no. 2’ which I cannot but admire. I don’t know how they have bungled it, but so long as I actually have two copies of the ‘Helena’ it will be all right, as Mullen’s will make no difficulty about exchanging the unused one. If however the second copy exist (not exists) only on paper–why there we have the sombre pathos.

I am rather surprised at your criticism on ‘The Spirit of man’, and consider the reference to ‘rescuing’ both otiose and in doubtful taste. Of course it must be read, not merely as an anthology, but in the light of its title and avowed purpose, and we must not be disappointed when we find certain favourites left out because they could not rightly claim a place in such a scheme. In this sense indeed the book is rather an original work than a collection of poems: for just as the musician may weave together a symphony by using the melodies of others arranged to express himself, so I take it Bridges is here working out an idea of his own: and the medium he chooses–as one might choose marble and another chalk (which you know is deteriorating terribly)–is the collective poetry of his predecessors. Or indeed, if I am reading too much into him, this would be a plan for a better anthology than has yet been written. One thing in the book I admit is indefensible–the detestable translation from Homer, which, though you may hardly recognise it, is meant to be in the metre of ‘Oh! let us try’. For this Bridges ought to get ‘something with boiling oil’.26

After a January so warm and mild that one could almost have sat in the garden, we have suddenly been whisked back to winter. It has snowed all day today, and is freezing hard tonight on top of it. I am very sorry to hear what you tell me about Hope: as you say, it must be terribly lonely and trying for her out there, and I am afraid the patient brings a very second rate constitution to the struggle.

your loving son,

Jack

P.S. I forgot to say the list of books, with one exception, is correct. J.

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

[Gastons

28 February 1916]

Monday

My dear Galahad,

I suppose that by this time there is wrath and fury against me: however, there is no excuse, and you must just thole, as they say.

I don’t know what it is like with you, but for this last week we have had the most lovely snow here. There is no wind, so where the snow ‘falleth, there shall it lie’:27 which means that when you walk through the woods every branch is laden like a Christmas tree, and the mass of white arranged in every fantastic shape and grouping on the trees is really wonderful. Don’t you love to walk while it is actually snowing? I love to feel the soft, little touches on your face and see the country through a sort of haze: it is so exquisitly desolate. It reminds one of that scene in ‘The Lore of Proserpine’.

Poor thing! I do like the way, because a fellow asks you to join a corps, that you complain about ‘your troubles’. May you never do worse! It reminds me of the story of Wellesly and his rich friend: W. had been going on one of his preaching tours round the country, riding alone in all weather, being put in the stocks, insulted, & stoned by the mob, in the course of all which he stayed for a night at the luxurious mansion of the friend. During the evening, a puff of smoke blew out of the grate, whereupon the host exclaimed ‘You see, Sir, these are some of the crosses which I have to bear!’28 Indeed, however, I ‘can’t talk’ as you would say, for of course I am an inveterate grumbler myself–as you, of all people have best reason to know.

By the way, do you know a series of rather commonplace little volumes at 1/6 each called the Walter Scott Library? I have just run across them: they are not particularly nice–though tolerable–but the point is that they sell some things I have often wanted to get: among others Morris’ translation of the ‘Volsunga Saga’ (not the poem, you know, that I have, but a translation of the old Icelandic prose saga) which cannot be got in any other edition except the twelve guinea ‘Works’, of which you can’t get the volumes separately.29 If only the edition were a little decenter I’d certainly get it.

Perhaps you laugh at my everlasting talk about buying books which I never really get: the real reason is that I have so little time here–indeed only the week-ends as I spend all the spare time on week-days in reading French books, which I want to get more fluent in. However, I am now nearing the end of the ‘Faerie Queene’, and when that is done the Saturdays & Sundays will be free for something else. Really, whatever you say, you have much more time than I.

I wonder why Osborne’s have sent no bill to me yet? I am not sure whether I asked you to give them my adress and tell them to send in the account or not: anyway, be a sport, and do so–AT ONCE. I have had a grisly dissapointment this week: Mrs K. said she was going away for a fortnight & I was gloating in the prospect of privacy & peace. But it has turned out a mare’s nest. Ochone!

be good,

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (LP V: 58-9):

[Gastons

7 March 1916]

Tuesday

My dear Galahad,

I was very glad to get your interesting letter–which was fortunately longer than some of them–as I was beginning to wonder what had become of you; I think your ‘lapse’ this term puts you on a level with mine last, so that we can cry quits and admit that we are both sinners.

I have had a great literary experience this week. I have discovered yet another author to add to our circle–our very own set: never since I first read ‘The well at the world’s end’ have I enjoyed a book so much–and indeed I think my new ‘find’ is quite as good as Malory or Morris himself. The book, to get to the point, is George Macdonald’s ‘Faerie Romance’, Phantastes,30 which I picked up by hazard in a rather tired Everyman copy–by the way isn’t it funny, they cost 1/1d. now–on our station bookstall last Saturday. Have you read it? I suppose not, as if you had, you could not have helped telling me about it. At any rate, whatever the book you are reading now, you simply MUST get this at once: and it is quite worth getting in a superior Everyman binding too.

Of course it is hopeless for me to try and describe it, but when you have followed the hero Anodos along that little stream to the faery wood, have heard about the terrible ash tree and how the shadow of his gnarled, knotted hand falls upon the book the hero is reading, when you have read about the faery palace–just like that picture in the Dulac book–and heard the episode of Cosmo, I know that you will quite agree with me. You must not be disappointed at the first chapter which is rather conventional faery tale style, and after it you won’t be able to stop until you have finished. There are one or two poems in the tale–as in the Morris tales you know–which, with one or two exceptions are shockingly bad, so don’t TRY to appreciate them: it is just a sign, isn’t it, of how some geniuses can’t work in metrical forms–another example being the Brontes.