Collected Letters Volume One: Family Letters 1905–1931

I quite agree with what you say about buying books, and love all the planning and scheming beforehand, and if they come by post, finding the neat little parcel waiting for you on the hall table and rushing upstairs to open it in the privacy of your own room. Some people–my father for instance–laugh at us for being so serious over our pleasures, but I think a thing can’t be properly enjoyed unless you take it in earnest, don’t you? What I can’t understand about you though is how you can get a nice new book and still go on stolidly with the one you are at: I always like to be able to start the new one on the day I get it, and for that reason wait to buy it until the old one is done But then of course you have so much more money to throw about than I.

Talking about finishing books, I have at last come to the end of the Faerie Queene: and though I say ‘at last’, I almost wish he had lived to write six books more as he hoped to do–so much have I enjoyed it. The two cantos of ‘Mutabilitie’ with which it ends are perhaps the finest thing in it, and if you have not done so already, you should read them whenever you have the time to spare.

I am now–by the same post–writing for a book called ‘British Ballads’ (Everyman)31 in the chocolate binding of which I used to disapprove: so you see I am gradually becoming converted to all your views. Perhaps one of these days you may even make a Christian of me. Yes: I have at last heard from the girlinosbornes: but like the minstrel in Scott,

‘Perhaps he wished the boon denied’ 32

as the bill is rather a staggerer and my finances are not very blooming at present–I am thinking of sending it out to my brother to pay.

I well remember the glorious walk of which you speak, how we lay drenched with sunshine on the ‘moss’ and were for a short time perfectly happy–which is a rare enough condition, God knows. As Keats says ‘Rarely, rarely comest thou, spirit of Delight’.33 I do hope we shall have many more pleasant hours such as that the days are running in so fast now, and it makes me so sad to think that I shall have only two more sets of holidays of the good old type, for in November comes my 18th birthday, military age, and the ‘vasty fields’34 of France, which I have no ambition to face. If there is good weather and you get some days off next hols., we should go for some walks before breakfast–the feel of the air is so exquisite. I don’t know when I can expect to come home.

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 60-1):

[Gastons]

Postmark: 10 March 1916

My dear Papy,

‘I wonder’ said Demetrius, and so do I. You know it is a terrible thing for a young boy to get into the hands of a rascally old firm of solicitors to be cajoled into signing all sorts of mysterious documents. How do I know to what I have committed myself? Perhaps my three moors are being made over, or you are putting an entail on my little place in Rome. (What is an entail) Ha! Ha! The missing heir. Indeed the whole proceeding savours of the novelette: you must cut your moustache shorter and call yourself Richard or Rupert. However, I herewith enclose the enigmatic slip of paper, with the forged signature inked over ‘avec d’empresment’ (French language). By the way, I see that I have acknowledged £16-13-10. Well what became of this…this…business…this tea business?

I hope you have read your Times Literary Supplement this week: do you see that the commonwealth of letters is the richer by a great new poet? Now let the stars retire for the sun has risen: let Hemans and M’Kitrick Ros35 be silent, for Mr. Little has come! It is really too good to be missed. I love the fine impassioned address to the sea, as much greater than Tennyson’s ‘Break, break, break’36 as that is than the one in the Prometheus, the one you will have noticed beginning

‘Oh, wave! Thy clemency is open

To shrewd suspicion’.37

What melody! What masterly phrazing and gorgeous imagery! We may pass over such minor beauties as the lioness which becomes the ‘formidable sultaness’ and go on to the last piece which contains the gems about the ‘golden brawn’ of the sunrise, the ‘various viands of the rainbow’ and nature ‘gorgeous, great, gratuitous’. Why this is a more exquisite song than the other about ‘Presumption, pride, pomposity’, though there is a certain likeness. This I suppose is the modern school that has got beyond Tennyson. Well perhaps they have: but I for one had sooner walk on the earth than soar on any Pegasus which bears such a disquieting resemblance to a rocking horse.

St. John’s, the school at Leatherhead whither my fellow pupil is wont daily to repair for gentlemanly and vertuous discipline and schooling in the humane letters, has got an epidemic of influenza and is breaking up for the term. So I suppose we shall have our well beloved Ford more in evidence now. Tell Arthur to write. I am sorry to hear what you say about Grandmother: I feel that we ought to have seen more of her, but it was not easy.38 Your loving,

son,

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (LP V: 63-4):

[Gastons

14 March 1916]

(You ought to know the date.)

My dear Galahad,

It must have been a very old Everyman list on which you found ‘Phantastes’ as one of the new ones, since, to my knowledge, the copy I got had been on the bookstall for weeks. Everymans with us have gone up 1d. in the shilling: I suppose it is just the same at home? By the time you get this you will probably have finished Phantastes, so you must give me your verdict on it as a whole: when one has read a book, I think there is nothing so nice as discussing it with some one else–even though it sometimes produces rather fierce arguments.

I too am rather disappointed. The ‘British Ballads’ has come, and though I am awfully bucked with the edition–I can’t think why I didn’t appreciate it before. This must be a triumph for you–the reading matter is not nearly so good as I expected. For one thing, instead of being all made up of real old ballads as I hoped, it is half full of silly modern imitations and even funny ones. Don’t you loathe ‘funny’ poetry? However, as it is not your style of book, I suppose I am boring you.

All the same, when you begin to write a letter you just go on babbling–at least I do–without thinking whether the person at the other end is interested or not, till you come to the last page and find that you haven’t really said what you wanted to. But perhaps that sort of rambling is the right kind of letter. I don’t know whether you personally write that way or not, but the result is charming, and you can’t think how eager I am to see the atrocious but familiar scroll waiting for me on the hall table. And yet, every letter is a disappointment: for a minute or two I was carried back to your room at Bernagh–don’t you remember rooms by their smells? Each one has its own–and seem to be talking to you, and then suddenly I come to the end and it’s all only a little bit of paper in my hand and Gastons again. But come. We are being mawkish. I think you and I ought to publish our letters (they’d be a jolly interesting book by the way) under the title of lamentations, as we are always jawing about our sorrows. I gather it was that beastly girl in Mayne’s who ‘flared up’ as you say. Aren’t they rude in that place? I think we ought to start a movement in the neighbourhood to boycott them. Only we’d have to join in it ourselves, which would be a pity.

No: I have never yet seen Kelsie’s book. I daresay she doesn’t know that I take an interest in such things, and you are lucky in having a reputation as a connoisseur which makes you free of every library in Belmont–tho’ there aren’t very many to be sure. I am afraid our Galahad will be growing a very stodgy mind if he reads nothing but Trollope and Goldsmith and Austen. Of course they are all very good, but I don’t think myself I could stand such a dose of stolidity. I suppose you will reply that I am too much the other way, and will grow a very unbalanced mind if I read nothing but lyrics and fairy tales. I believe you are right, but I find it so hard to start a fresh novel: I have a lazy desire to dally with the old favourites again. I think you’ll have to take me in hand and set me a ‘course’ when I come home.

By the way what about the piano and the gramophone these days? We don’t seem to talk of music so much now as we did: of course your knowledge on that subject is so much greater than mine that I can really only express a philistine’s taste. Are you still going to Walker? For my part, I have found my musical soul again–you will be relieved to hear–this time in the preludes of Chopin. I suppose you must have played them to me, but I never noticed them before. Aren’t they wonderful? Although Mrs K. doesn’t play them well, they are so passionate, so hopeless, I could almost cry over them: they are unbearable. I will find out the numbers of the ones I mean and we will have a feast next holidays.

By the way, you speak in your last letter of the difference between music and books: I think (to get back to an old argument) it is just the same difference as between friendship and love. The one is a calm and easy going satisfaction, the other a sort of madness: we take possession of one, the other takes possession of us: the one is always pleasant the other in its greatest moments of joy is painful. But perhaps I am rating books and friendship too low, because poetry and great novels do sometimes rouse you almost as much as music: the great love scenes in Shirley for instance, or the best parts of Swinburne etc.

I am sorry I always make the mistake about your address. Hullo–I’ve done it again.

Yours,

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (LP V: 64-5):

[Gastons

21 March 1916]

My dear Galahad,

So here we are at the weekly letter, and very glad I am too; but Heavens!–how the weeks run on don’t they? While I was at Malvern I used to count the days and long for the end of term, so of course time crawled; now-a-days when I am quite comfortable the whole thing goes on far too quickly. And it’s all so many days, months etc., not of the term or the year, but of one’s life–which is tiresome. ‘Help!’ I hear you muttering, ‘Is he going to moralize for four pages?’ (Cheer up, I’ll try to hold it in.)

I’m awfully bucked to hear that you think the same about Phantastes as I, though if you only began to enjoy it in the eleventh chapter, you must have missed what I thought were the best parts–that is to say the forest scene and the faery palace–or does that come after chapter XI? You will gather that the book is upstairs and that I am too lazy to go and get it. I hope that by this time you have bought ‘Sir Gibbie’39 and will be able to advise me on it. Some of the titles of his other books are, to me at least, even more alluring than the one you quote: for instance ‘At the back of the north wind’.40

Isn’t it funny the way some combinations of words can give you–almost apart from their meaning–a thrill like music? It is because I know that you can feel this magic of words AS words that I do not despair of teaching you to appreciate poetry: or rather to appreciate all good poetry, as you now appreciate some. This is however off the point: what I meant to say was that lots of his titles give me that feeling. I wish there were more in Everymans, don’t you?

Talking about Everymans, do you know what their 1/6 binding is like? I can’t remember whether you have anything in it or not, but I have been thinking of trying it, so tell me what you know on the subject. What? you ask, still new books? Well really the length of the Faerie Queene was a godsend, because so long as I turned to it every week-end with the regularity of clockwork I could keep my money in my pockets: now however the temptation to get a nice new book for the longed for Sunday rest is overwhelming.

I am glad to hear that you have moved into Lily’s room as I think you–or ‘we’ shall I say in selfishness–will be more comfortable there: at the same time I have a sort of affection for the old one where we have had such good times: we should call it ‘joyous garde’.41 Still, I am longing to find myself in your new quarters with all the old talk, the old music, and the old fingering of rich, friendly books.

You know, Galahad, that though I try to hide it with silly jokes that annoy you, I am very conscious of how unfair our friendship is, and how you ask me over continually and give me an awfully good time, while I hardly ever bring you to us: indeed though he is a good father to me, I must confess that he–my father–is an obstacle. I do hope you understand? You know how I would love if I could have you any time I liked up in my little room with the gramophone and a fire of our own, to be merry and foolish to our hearts content: or even if I could always readily accept your invitations without feeling a rotter for leaving him alone. I don’t know why I’ve gone off into this discussion, but perhaps it is just as well. Indeed the only thing to be done is to get my father married as quickly as may be–say to Mary Bradley. Or lets poison old Stokes and give him the widow. In which case of course our imagined snuggery in the little end room would be brightened up by a charming circle of brothers and sisters in law.

I know quite well that feeling of something strange and wonderful that ought to happen, and wish I could think like you that this hope will some day be fulfilled. And yet I don’t know: suppose that when you had opened the door the Ash had REALLY confronted you and turning to fly, you had found the house melting into a haunted wood–mightn’t you have wished for the old ‘dull’ world again? Perhaps indeed the chance of a change into some world of Terreauty (a word I’ve coined to mean terror and beauty) is in reality in some allegorical way daily offered to us if we had the courage to take it. I mean one has occasionally felt that this cowardice, this human loathing of spirits just because they are such may be keeping doors shut? Who knows? Of course this is all nonsense and the explanation is that through reading Maeterlink,42 to improve my French, too late at night, I have developed a penchant for mystical philosophy–greatly doubtless to the discomfort of my long suffering reader.

By the way, is the girlinosbornes beginning to ask about my bill yet–which is not paid? Write soon AND LONG mon vieux, to,

yours,

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 70):

[Gastons]

Postmark: 1 April 1916

My dear Papy,

The little plans of mice and men, it would seem, must a gang aft aglee.43 You ask me when I am thinking of going home. Well I was thinking of the 15th, as instructed by the Colonel, so that his next leave would fall nicely at the end of my holydays. Mrs. K. suddenly turns up with the pleasing news that Terry is going on Tuesday the 4th., and Osbert Smythe with mother is coming down on the same date to convalesce from a wound, and–ah–when was I thinking of going home? Or in other words, after a little pow-pow, I have been ‘kicked out’ (Perhaps they were right to dissemble their love, but why–).44 So I fear me Tuesday it must be. I hardly think a letter from you can reach me before that, so I shall borrow from K. By the way, Terry tells me that all the Belfast boats are off; if this is so, will you please wire and tell me, as in that case I shall have to go by Larne: I suppose the same ticket and payment of difference will do–or is the fare by Larne just the same? Of course if Liverpool and Fleetwood are still running, I will go by either–whichever is running on Tuesday night. In any case please wire and tell me. I am sorry to be such a nuisance, but it is quite as annoying for me, and more so for W. Sunt lacrimae rerum.45

your loving son,

Jack

P.S. On second thoughts, Monday would be better if you get this in time; if I go on Tuesday I shall have to travel with Terry and a lot of his friends, which would be terrible–for one thing I know they don’t want me. So Monday be it: please wire. J.

Lewis was at home from 5 April to 11 May 1916. Writing to Albert about him on 7 April 1916, Mr Kirkpatrick said:

The very idea of urging or stimulating him to increased exertion makes me remind him that it is inadvisable for him to read after 11 p.m. If he were not blessed with such a store of physical health and strength, he wd. surely grow weary now and then. But he never does. He hardly realizes–how could he at his age–with what a liberal hand nature has bestowed her bounties on him…I notice that you feel adverse at present to let him enter the university at the close of next Autumn…But as far as preparation is concerned, it is difficult to conceive of any candidate who ought to be in better position to face the ordeal. He has read more classics than any boy I ever had–or indeed I might add than any I ever heard of, unless it be an Addison or Landor or Macaulay. These are people we read of, but I have never met any. (LP V: 74)

Mr Kirkpatrick wrote again on 5 May 1916:

The case of Clive is very perplexing, but let us make a few points clear. I think he ought to be able to gain a classical scholarship or exhibition at entrance in any of the Oxford Colleges next Novr. or Dec, when the exams are held. But suppose I gave my opinion that he could with advantage do another years work with me. Do you not see what you are in for? Clive will be 18 in Dec, and if he remains in this country after that date, strictly speaking one month after that date, he will be liable for military service. There is no escape from that now…Ireland is exempt from the Act. Will it be brought in, as Carson46 before, and now Captain Craig have asked? I find it hard to believe it. But we shall see. At any rate we may give up the idea that the war may be over before Jany. 1917…What is to become of the Eng. Universities under this new Conscription Act? I cannot say, but I do not see how they are to go on. Suppose Clive gained an entrance exhibn. next Decr. He would not be able to attend lectures. At the end of one month he would be liable to conscription. (LP V: 78-9)

Albert replied on 8 May 1916: ‘Clive has decided to serve, but he also wishes to try his fortune at Oxford’ (LP V: 79).

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (LP V: 80-1):

[Gastons

16 May 1916]

My dear Galahad,

I wonder what you are doing tonight? It is nearly ten o’clock and I suppose you are thinking of bed: perhaps you are at this moment staring into the good old bookcase and gloating over your treasures. How well I can see it all, exactly as we arranged it a few days ago: it is rather consoling for me to be able to follow you in imagination like this and feel as if I were back in the well-known places.

Now let us get on with what you really want to hear; no, I did not go to the ‘Starlight Express’47 nor could I see it in the ‘Times’ list of entertainments. Perhaps after all it is not an opera but a cantata or something. What I did go to see was a play called ‘Disraeli’48 which I liked immensely, though I am not sure the Meccecaplex would have cared for it. It’s about the real Disraeli49 you know, the part being taken by Dennis Eadie–whom you saw in ‘Milestones’50 didn’t you; he looks exactly like the pictures of the said politician in the old Punches. However, it is a thoroughly interesting play and I shall never repent of having seen it:

I think you agree with me that a good sensible play is far better than a second rate opera, don’t you?

By the way, you have really no right to this letter, old man: that one of yours which you have been talking about all the holidays is not here, and Mrs K. says that nothing came for me while I was away. So now I shall be no longer content with your continual ‘as I said in my letter’, but will expect it all over again–especially the remarks about ‘The Back of the Northwind’ (by the way doesn’t it sound much better if you pronounce that last word ‘Northwind’ as one word, with the accent slightly on the first syllable?).

Talking of books–you might ask, when do I talk of anything else–I have read and finished ‘The Green Knight’,51 which is absolutely top-hole: in fact the only fault I have to find with it is that it is too short–in itself a compliment. It never wearies you from first to last, and considering the time when it was written, some things about it, the writer’s power of getting up atmosphere for instance, quite in the Bronte manner, are little short of marvellous: the descriptions of the winter landscapes around the old castle, and the contrast between them and the blazing hearth inside, are splendid. The last scene too, in the valley where the terrible knight comes to claim his wager, is very impressive.

Since finishing it I have started–don’t be surprised–‘Rob Roy’,52 which I suppose you have read long ago. I really don’t know how I came to open it: I was just looking for a book in the horribly scanty library of Gastons, and this caught my eye. I must admit that it was a very lucky choice, as I am now revelling in it. Isn’t Die Vernon a good heroine–almost as good as Shirley? And the hero’s approach through the wild country round his Uncle’s hall in Northumberland is awfully good too.

In fact, taking all things round, the world is smiling for me quite pleasantly just at present. The country round here is looking absolutely lovely: not with the stern beauty we like of course: but still, the sunny fields full of buttercups and nice clean cows, the great century old shady trees, and the quaint steeples and tiled roofs of the villages peeping up in their little valleys–all these are nice too, in their humble way. I imagine (am I right?) that ‘Our Village’53 gives one that kind of feeling. Tell me all about your own ‘estate’ as Spenser would say, when you write.

Have you finished ‘Persuasion’54 and has the De Quincy come yet, and what do you think of both? Have there been any particular beauties of sun and sky since I left? I know all that sounds as though I were trying to talk like a book, but you will understand that I can’t put it any other way and that I really do want to hear about those kind of things.

This letter brings you the first instalment of my romance: I expect you’ll find it deadly dull: of course the first chapter or so must be in any case, and it’ll probably never get beyond them. By the way it is headed as you see ‘The Quest of Bleheris’. That’s a rotten title of course, and I don’t mean it to be permanent: when it’s got on a bit, I must try to think of another, really poetic and suggestive: perhaps you can help me in this when you know a bit more what the story is about.

Now I really must shut up. (That’s the paper equivalent of ‘Arthur, I’m afraid I shall have to go in a minute’.) Oh, I was forgetting all about Frankenstein.55 What’s it like? ‘Really Horrid’?, as they say in ‘Northanger Abbey’.56 Write soon before I have time to feel lonely.

Yours,

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (LP V: 82-4):

[Gastons 22

May 1916]

Monday. 10 o’clock.

My dear Arthur,

Many, many thanks for the nice long letter, which I hope you will keep up for the rest of the term, in length. I see that it has taken four days to reach me, as it came only this morning, so I don’t know when you will be reading this.

I am rather surprised at your remark about ‘Persuasion’, as it seemed to me very good–though not quite in her usual manner. I mean it is more romantic and less humorous than the others, while the inevitable love interest, instead of being perfunctory as in ‘Emma’57 and ‘Mansfield Park’ is the real point of the story. Of course I admit that’s not quite the style we have learned to expect from Jane Austen, but still don’t you think it is rather interesting to see an author trying his–or her–hand at something outside their own ‘line of business’? Just as it is interesting to see Verdi in ‘Aida’58 rising above himself–though I suppose I have no right to talk musical criticism to you–or indeed to anybody.

I am glad that you are bucked with your De Quincy, and am eager to see the paper. By the way I suppose you notice that the same series can be got in leather for 5/-. I wonder what that would be like. I am thinking of getting the two volumes of Milton in it, as soon as I am flush or have a present of any sort due to me: one wants to get a person like Milton in a really worthy edition you know. Tell me what you think about this.