Collected Letters Volume One: Family Letters 1905–1931

On Wednesday I had a great joy: I went up to town with the old woman59 (by the way I have just seen the point of your joke about ‘byre’ and liar. Ha! Ha!) to see the Academy.60 I have never been to one before, and therefore cannot say whether this year’s was good as they go: but anyway I enjoyed it immensely and only one thing–your company–was lacking to make it perfect. How I wish we could have been there to enjoy some things together–for there were ones that would have sent you into raptures. Particularly there was a picture called ‘Nature groaning’ that exactly reminded me of that wet walk of ours, although the scene was different: it represented a dull, gloomy pool in a wood in autumn, with a fierce scudding rain blown slantways across it, dashing withered leaves from the branches and beating the sedge at the sides. I don’t suppose that makes you realize it at all, but there was a beautiful dreariness about it that would have appealed to you. But of course it is really no good trying to describe them: I wish you would get that Academy book which one always finds in a dentist’s waiting room so that we could compare notes. If you do, you must particularly notice ‘The Egyptian Dancers’ [‘A Dancer of Ancient Egypt’], ‘The Valley of the Weugh or Sleugh’ or something like that [‘The Valley of the Feugh’] (a glorious snow Scene), ‘The deep places of the earth’, ‘The watcher’ and a lovely faery scene from Christina Rosetti’s ‘Goblin Market’. It costs only a shilling I think and tho’ of course the black and white reproductions lose a lot, still they are quite enjoyable.61

Talking about pictures etc., I was very pleased with your description of the mist and the night sky: you are by no means such a contemptable artist in words as you would like people to believe–in fact to be honest, if you weren’t lazy you could do big things–and you have brought a very clear picture to my mind: one does get topping effects over the Lough sometimes, doesn’t one? Really, after all, for sheer beauty of nearly every kind, there is no place I know like our own good county Down.

I am still at ‘Rob Roy’ which I like immensely, and am writing by this post for the first volume of Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’ in the Everyman 2/2 edition:62 am I wise? I have dipped into them very often latterly in the Kirk’s horrible old copy, and think I shall like them, while, as I told you before, the paper of that Everyman is especially nice. I have also got a French prose romance of ‘Tristan and Iseut’63 which promises very well as far as I can see: in the meantime however since like all French firms’ books it is paper back, I have sent it away to be bound in a very tasty binding of my own choice. Tell me more about ‘Frankenstein’ in your next letter so that I may decide whether to buy it or no. Any new records? I imagine that the success of your late venture may buck up your taste for your gramophone may it not?

This brings you the next chapter of my infliction. By the way I don’t know how I actually wrote it, but I certainly meant to say ‘The quest of Bleheris’ and [not] ‘of THE Bleheris’, since Bleheris is a man’s name. However, as I wrote to you before, that title is only waiting until I can get another better one. Your advice as to fighting and brasting exactly falls in with my own ideas since like Milton I am,

‘Not sedulous by nature to indite

Wars………’ 64

I am afraid indeed that like ‘Westward Ho’65 my tale will have to dawdle about a bit in the ‘City of Nesses’ before I can get poor Bleheris off on his adventures: still you must do your best.

Oh vanity! vanity! to think that I can waste all this time jawing about my own work. Oh, one thing: I can’t agree with you that Kelsie is at all like Diana Vernon: for if–to talk like Rashleigh,66 ‘My fair cousin’ has a fault, it is a certain deadly propriety and matter-of-factness that will creep in even when she’s at her best, don’t you think so.

And now I’ve scrawled for a whole hour (it’s just striking) so good night.

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 81-2):

Gastons,

Great Bookham.

28/5/16.

My dear Papy,

I hear from the colonel that you are expecting a letter:67 so, as they say of a sheep in a picture book, ‘here it is’, although, to be exact, I don’t see why I should owe you one–the score so far this term being exactly equal on both sides.

Well, how have things been since I left home? I hope the laurels are coming on nicely. Everything here is of course very much the same, and the weather is glorious. On my way back I went to a play that would have appealed to you–‘Disraeli’, which you will remember to have seen reviewed in Punch’s ‘At the play’.68 If the real man was at all like the character in the piece he certainly must have been a prince of cards. I suppose that most of the bon mots that I heard at the Royalty are actual historic ones, preserved in his letters and so forth. I wonder too whether it be true to life when, having said good thing, he is represented as making his secretary take a note of it ‘For Manchester next week: that’ll just about suit Manchester’. Which reminds me how are you getting on with the fourteenth–or is the twentieth volume of his life?69

The only other excitement I can think of was a jaunt up to town with Mrs. K. to see the Academy, last Saturday. I had never been to one before, and therefore cannot say whether this was good, as they go, or not. At any rate it seemed to me that there were a lot of very nice things there, while even watching the other watchers was a great amusement.

My reading at present is very sober and old fashioned–‘Rob Roy’ and the ‘Canterbury Tales’, both of which are most satisfactory. The former I suppose you have read years ago: at least I have tracked to its lair one of your favourite quotations, ‘Do not mister or Campbell me: my foot is on my native heath and my name is MacGregor’.70 But what a pity it is to see such good ‘yarning’ as Scott’s spoilt and tripped up at every turn by his intolerably stilted and pedantic English. I suppose we must thank Dr. Johnson and ‘Glorious John’71 for first making such prose possible.

I met Warnie on Friday, according to instructions, and saw him go off by his 4.0 troop train. I am sorry to hear from him that you are bothered with some sort of rheumatism, and hope that it is now on the mend.

your loving

son Jack

P.S. I am one up in letter now: so don’t forget to write soon. J.

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (LP XI: 259-60):

[Gastons

30 May 1916]

My dear Galahad,

I don’t know whether you quite realized how mysterious your last letter was: on page III I read ‘have just begun a tale called “Alice for short”’. Very good, say I, remembering William de Morgan’s novel of that name:72 but you are ‘doubtful whether you’ll finish it’: remembering the size of the volume on our landing book case I am not surprised: then I read on a bit and see that you ‘daren’t let it out of your hands, even to me’. Ah! Ce devient interèssant (is there an accent on that word?), I think something tremendously improper. But imagine my even greater confusion on learning that de Morgan’s long and heavy looking novel is a continuation of Alice in Wonderland!73 Of course as soon as I turned the page I saw that you meant ‘began to write’ and not ‘began to read’ as I had naturally thought, being as you know cracked absolutely.

Well as to the information itself: I cannot urge you too strongly to go on and write something, anything, but at any rate WRITE. Of course everyone knows his own strength best, but if I may give any advice, I would say as I did before, that humour is a dangerous thing to try: as well, there are so many funny books in the world that it seems a shame to make any more, while the army of weird and beautiful or homely and passionate works could well do with recruits. But perhaps your ‘Alice’ is not so much humorous as lyric and fantastic? Anyway, you might as well send me along what you have done and let me have a look at it: at the worst it can’t be more boring than ‘Bleheris’ and of course it’s much easier to criticise each other’s things on paper than viva voce: at least I think so.

And by the way, while I’m on this subject, there’s one thing I want to say: I do hope that in things like this you’ll always tell me the absolute truth about my work, just as if it were by someone else whom we did not know: I will promise to do the same for you. Because otherwise there is no point in sending them, and I have sometimes thought that you are inclined not to. (Not to be candid I mean). So I shall expect your MS–‘Alice’ or anything else you have done–next week.

‘Rob Roy’ is done now, and (to pay you out for your remarks about ‘Persuasion’) I must admit that I only skimmed the last three or four chapters: the worst of a book with a plot is that when the plot is over, the obvious ‘fixing up’ is desperately tedious. On the whole however it was jolly good, and some of the scenery passages, as you say, are gorgeous: particularly where Frank is riding ‘near the line’ with the Bailey and the latter points out the Highland Hills–do you remember? That bit is almost as good as the scene where Clement Chapman shows Ralph the Wall of the World. But I suppose you would think it sacriledge to compare Morris to Scott. So would I for that matter, only the other way round.

You ask about the binding of my ‘Tristram’: well of course, apart from the binding itself, all French books are far poorer than ours: this one for instance cost 2/- (2fr.50) although it was only a paper back, of about the same size as my Gawain: the binding will come to another 2/- or perhaps 2/6. That sounds a lot: but after all if you saw a nice leather bound book in a shop of that size and were told it cost 4/-, I don’t think it would seem very dear. Of course it is true I may very likely be disappointed in it, but then, not being a prudent youth like you, I have to take risks occasionally.

With the Chaucer I am most awfully bucked: it is in the very best Everyman style–lovely paper, strong boards, and–aren’t you envious–not one but two bits of tissue paper. When I’ve collected enough in that way, I shall be able to put tissue in all my better class Everymans. As to the contents, although I looked forward to them immensely, they have proved even better than I hoped: I have only had time so far to read the ‘Prologue’ and ‘The Knight’s Tale’ (that’s Palamon and Arcite you know), but I adore them. The tale is a perfect poem of chivalry, isn’t it? And the pathos of Arcite’s death is really wonderful, with the last broken appeal,

‘Forget nat Palamon that gentil man74

and the cry of ‘Mercy Emelye’.75

But God! there I go on talking like a book again, and you a poor invalid who ought to be consoled. Seriously though, I hope you’ll be quite alright by the time you read this: I don’t like to hear of your being in bed so often, especially as it affects your spirits so. However, cheer up, and whenever you are fed up with life, start writing: ink is the great cure for all human ills, as I have found out long ago.

I quite appreciate what you say about my father, to whom I wrote on Sunday: but after all he hasn’t written to me, and as he had Warnie with him I thought he could ‘thole’. Still you are quite right in what you say and I must be more regular in future.

I thought you would like De Quincy, and hope you will go on reading him: it is always nice to feel that one has got a new friend among the book world, isn’t it? What an old miser you are though. I suppose I shall have to buy the Academy book myself now: and rest assured that you will never see one page of it. It is strange that ‘Frankenstein’ should be badly written: one would expect the wife of Shelley to be a woman of taste, wouldn’t one?

As to my brother’s talk about another ‘E Lucevan le Stelle’ I’m afraid the front must have turned the poor boy’s brain: considering how I pined after your copy for over a year it wasn’t very likely that I should have forgotten one if I had it. What put the idea into his head I can’t think.

Have been to Leatherhead baths for a swim today and am terribly stiff, as I always am after the first bathe of the year. Sorry this is not much of a letter this week, old man, but it’s after 11, and everyone is going to bed. This brings you the next instalment of Bleheris–criticise freely.

Yours,

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (LP V: 84-6):

[Gastons

6 June 1916]

My dear Arthur,

I was rather surprised to see the note paper of your last letter, and certainly wish that I could have been with you: I have some vague memories of the cliffs round there and of Dunluce Castle, and some memories which are not vague at all of the same coast a little further on at Castle-rock, where we used to go in the old days. Don’t you love a windy day at a place like that? Waves make one kind of music on rocks and another on sand, and I don’t know which of the two I would rather have.

As to your remarks about my ‘promise’ to join you on some future holiday, I must call your attention to the fact that all I promised was not to contract any engagement with my Aunt that could stand in the way of it, always warning you that I might not go anywhere. However I hope to do so, and will certainly try my best.

By the way, in future, if possible, don’t write your letter on so many different ‘levels’, so to speak: I keep them all on a pin now, and so far, all being written the same way up, I have been able to turn to any one I wanted, like a book: the latest one is a hard nut to crack. Always grumbling you see.

You may well ask ‘when’ my ‘Tristan’ is coming: I have asked the same question myself more than once, and it’s beginning to be like those famous Columbia records the holydays before last. As to the binding, if it is what the girl in the shop told me, it will be boards with leather back, and those little triangular pieces of leather on the corners. I don’t know if you understand this description, so I have drawn it for you: though perhaps indeed you find the picture quite as hard. In other words it is a glorified edition of the 2/- Everyman. The reason I’m not quite certain is that the girl showed me a much larger book done in the same style, only red. As I didn’t care for the colour, she said she thought it could be done like that in brown; so I’m still waiting the result.

With my last parcel–the Canterbury Tales–I got Macmillan’s and Dent’s catalogues, where I find much of interest: I suppose you know it all already however. For instance I never knew before that Macmillans would send you–through a bookseller–books on approval. Of course when things are so out of joint as you’re only allowed to keep them for a week, perhaps you could hardly manage it over in Ireland. Being so near town myself, I think I shall try it, wouldn’t you? I also notice that Dents have a series of ‘Classiques Francaises’ corresponding to the English Everymans Library. Does that mean that they’d be bound the same way? Among them I’m very pleased to find a rendering of the ‘Chanson de Roland’ into modern French:76 this, as you probably know, is the old French epic, equivalent to our Beowulf,77 and for years I have been wondering how to get it. Now, as things sometimes do, it just turns up. Of course talking about Beowulf reminds me again what hundreds of things there still are to buy: if you remember it has been ‘the next book I’ll get’ ever since you have known me.

I know very well what you mean by books getting tiresome half way through, but don’t think it always happens: for instance ‘Phantastes’, ‘Jane Eyre’, ‘Shirley’ (which in fact only begins to get interesting about then) might be cited–good word that–as examples. Tell me more about ‘John Silence’78 when you write, and also let me know the publisher and price, as I have forgotten again and may want it one of these days.

I don’t like the way you say ‘don’t tell anyone’ that you thought ‘Frankenstein’ badly written, and at once draw in your critical horns with the ‘of course I’m no judge’ theory. Rot! You are a very good judge for me because our tastes run in the same direction. And you ought to rely more on yourself than on anyone else in matters of books–that is if you’re out for enjoyment and not for improvement or any nonsense of that sort. Which reminds me, I came on a phrase in Maeterlinck the other day which just suits my views about youth and silly scientific learning. ‘L’ignorance lumineuse de la jeunesse’,79 the luminous ignorance of youth is exactly our strong point, isn’t it?

Great God, how I must be boring you! But you ought to know by now that your friend Chubs with a pen in his hand is a very dangerous object: that extemporising goes a bit far at times: though seriously, to harp back to the eternal subject of self–I think Bleheris has killed my muse–always rather a sickly child. At any rate my verse, both in quality and in quantity for the last three weeks is deplorable!! Before you get any further in the aforesaid romance, let me hasten to warn you that when I said [of] the first chapter, that Bleheris was like you, I hadn’t really thought of what I should make him. However I take that back, so that in future when my poor hero does anything mean you won’t think I am covertly preaching at you.

In odd moments last week I read an excellent novel by–you’d never guess–Bernard Shaw. It is called ‘Love among the Artists’, and is published in Constable’s shilling series.80 I want you to get it: there are one or two extraordinary characters in it, and I think the whole gist of the thing, all about music, art etc. would appeal to you very strongly. Tell me if you do. I wonder what the good author who takes his own works so seriously would think if he knew that he was read for pleasure to fill up the odd moments of a schoolboy. If you do get the book, don’t forget to read the preface which is very amusing.

I can’t understand why you are willing to let me see your tale in the holydays, but are unwilling to send it by post. I refuse point blank to read it in your presence: that means that you spend your time thinking of what the other person is thinking and have no attention left to give to the work itself. So you may as well send it along.

Since I last wrote to you I have found the thought of a book done and yet not done intolerable, and therefore gone back and finished ‘Rob Roy’. I am very glad I did so, as otherwise I should have missed the very vigorous scene in the library, and the equally satisfactory death of Rashleigh.

I have written from 10 to quarter past 11 and the others are going up; so good night my Galahad,

from yours,

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (LP V: 89-90):

[Gastons

14 June 1916]

My dear Arthur,

I must begin by apologizing for being a day late this week: I suppose by this time you have worked up quite a flourishing grievance. However, you will be glad to know that there is a genuine excuse this time–not just laziness. The reason is that there were visitors here last night, and tho I don’t usually turn up on these occasions, I was so warmly urged ‘just to come into the drawing room for a minute or two when I had finished my work’ that I really couldn’t refuse. So the hour between 10 and 11 which on Tuesday nights is usually taken up with your letter was lost.

The reason why Mrs K. pressed me was that the visitors were some neighbours of ours and with them a girl who is staying with them–that’s an elegantly arranged sentence for a literary man–who has a voice and is being trained for opera. Well I am certainly glad I didn’t miss it, as she has a very fine contralto and sang two good songs–your record from ‘Orfeo’81 and a very queer thing of Debussy’s which I would like to hear again. Of course with that exception she sang rubbish, as the fools asked for it: horrible old ballads like ‘Annie Laurie’ etc. Still it was worth sitting talking about the war and wasting my time even for two good things. Why are singers always so plain I wonder?

I can’t help smiling at the thought of your sitting in the garden on Sunday morning, as we have had nothing but thunderstorms for the last week and it has just now turned so cold that we’ve gone back to fires. There, I’m talking about the weather! By the way I don’t know if you ever noticed how topping it is to see a fire again suddenly in the middle of June: it is so homely and cozy and is like having a bit of the good old Winter back again.

The remark about the cows with which you credit me really comes from your newly made friend De Quincy. I think it is just before the description of the flood–the ‘Bore’ as he calls it. Look it up and see if I’m right.82 Anyway I quite agree with it: but perhaps even nicer is a humorous looking old horse, living contentedly in a field by himself, it’s those little things that keep one from being lonely on a walk–there is one horse here that I have got to know quite well by giving him sugar. Perhaps he may save me from a witch some day or lead me home in a fog?

You will be amused to hear that my Tristen’ has not YET come: that is nearly three weeks now, and I am beginning to get angry. You ask at what shop it’s being done: well you see it’s being worked indirectly through the village stationer here who will send books to be bound for you in London, I don’t know where. The reason for its taking so long, I imagine is that the wretch really waits until he has several to do and then makes one parcel of them so as to save himself the postage. In any case I shall not give him another opportunity, as there are people in the neighbouring town of Leatherhead who bind books themselves.

I am glad you like ‘John Silence’ and must get it too. I have now read all the tales of Chaucer which I ever expected to read, and feel that I may consider the book as finished: some of them are quite impossible. On the whole, with one or two splendid exceptions such as the Knight’s and the Franklin’s tales, he is disappointing when you get to know him. He has most of the faults of the Middle Ages–garrulity and coarseness–without their romantic charm which we find in the ‘Green Knight’ or in Malory. Still, I only really expected to enjoy some of the Tales, and feel that the book was worth getting for their sake. I am not sure whether you would like him or not, but you should certainly not start poetry with him.

Which reminds me, have you ever carried out your plans of reading ‘Jason’?83I am wondering what I ought to get next, or whether I ought to save money and read some of the Gastons books–perhaps finish the Brontes or take up another Scott. I have found that Sidney’s romance the Arcadia’84 is published at 4/6 by the Cambridge University Press (what are they like?) and am strongly tempted to get it. One thing that interests me is that Sidney wrote it for his sister, the Countess of Pembroke, sending it to her chapter by chapter as he wrote it as I send you ‘Bleheris’. Perhaps we were those two in a former state of existence–and that is why your handwriting is so like a girl’s. Though even my self conceit will hardly go as far as to compare myself with Sidney.

What a queer compound you are. You talk about your shyness and won’t send me the MS of ‘Alice’, yet say that you are willing to read it to me–as if reading your own work aloud wasn’t far more of an ordeal. By the way I hope that you are either going on with ‘Alice’ or starting something else: you have plenty of imagination, and what you want is practice, practice, practice. It doesn’t matter what we write (at least this is my view) at our age, so long as we write continually as well as we can. I feel that every time I write a page either of prose or of verse, with real effort, even if it’s thrown into the fire next minute, I am so much further on. And you too who have been so disappointed at the technical difficulties of composing, won’t you find it a relief to turn to writing where you can splash about, so to speak, as you like, and gradually get better and better by experience? Or in other words, I shall expect an MS of some sort with your next week’s letter: if I don’t get it, I may have recourse to serious measures.

I like the way you say ‘why don’t’ I ‘take’ a day in town! As if I could just stroll down one morning and say that I wasn’t going to do any work today: no Galahad, that sort of thing may do in Franklin Street, but where people WORK–note that word, you may not have met it before–it can’t be did.