Collected Letters Volume One: Family Letters 1905–1931

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (LP V: 103-5):

[Gastons

4 July 1916]

My dear Arthur,

So you feel hurt that I should think you worth talking to only about books, music, etc.: in other words that I keep my friendship with you only for the highest plane of life: that I leave to others all the sordid and uninteresting worries about so-called practical life, and share with you those joys and experiences which make that life desirable: that–but now I am getting rhetorical. It must be the influence of dear Sidney and his euphuism I suppose. But seriously, what can you have been thinking about when you said ‘only’ books, music, etc., just as if these weren’t the real things!

However, if I had thought for a moment that it would interest you, of course you are perfectly welcome to a full knowledge of my plans–such as they are. Indeed I imagined that you had a pretty clear idea about them: well, ‘let us go forward’, to quote from a certain romance: being Irish, I hear from my father that the fact of my being educated in England will not bring me under the new act. I am therefore going to remain as I am until December when my Oxford exam comes off. After that, I shall of course join the army: but in what exact way, I don’t at present know any more than you do. So there you have the whole yarn.

I may just remark in passing that you should by this time know better than to waste pity on your friend Chubs for ‘worrying’ about it: did you ever see him worrying about anything? I have learnt by now that whatever plans you make in this world, everything always turns out quite differently, so what is the use of bothering? To be honest, the question has hardly crossed my mind once this term. Now I don’t mind in the least telling you all this, and if you wanted to know I don’t see why you never asked before. But then I am a coarse-grained creature who never could follow the feelings of refined–might I say super-refined?–natures like my Galahad’s.

The annoying part is that you have taken up your letter (and here am I taking up mine!!) with this, to the exclusion of all sorts of interesting things that I wanted to hear: for instance, you must tell me more about Hardy. We have all heard of him till we are sick of it, and so I should like to hear the opinion of someone I know. What sort of a novel is it? Would I like it?

But of course the first thing I looked for in this evening’s letter was to see if there was an instalment there. I have now read it over again with last week’s to get the continuous narrative, and with the same pleasure. Did you quite realise what a splendid touch it was for Dennis to hope ‘nobody would steal his clothes’? Somehow the practical, commonsense realism of that, increases the fairy-like effect of what follows enormously. I don’t know if I can explain it, but it sort of brings the thing just enough in touch with reality to make it convincing, without spoiling its dreaminess. Also the idea of his seeing her face not directly, but in the water, is somehow very romantic. By the way, I hope you don’t really think that I hinted for a moment that your willow was borrowed from my roses: how could you know what my roses were going to do about five chapters ahead? Above all, don’t change anything in the plan of your tale on that account. Perhaps, as you say, we both took it unconsciously from ‘Phantastes’, who in his turn borrowed it from the dryads, etc. of classical mythology, who are a development of the primitive savage idea that everything has a spirit (just as your precious Jehovah is an old Hebrew thunder spirit): so we needn’t be ashamed of borrowing our trees, since they are really common property.

Your reply to my criticism is typically Galahadian: but though in your case I am sure it is more sincere than it looks, still this excessive modesty is rather absurd. You may be dissatisfied with it (though I don’t see why), you may be uncertain of yourself, but still in your heart of hearts you don’t think of ‘The Water Sprite’ as ‘that rubbish of mine’, now do you?

Do you know what your tale has done? It has made me sorry that I began Bleheris in the old style: I see now that though it is harder to work some effects in modern English, yet on the whole my way of writing is a sort of jargon: however, we must do the best we can. I was very glad to hear that you liked the Sunken Wood, especially as the next two chapters are stodgy conversation. I am afraid Bleheris never gets into the wood: but you ought to know that the ‘little, hobbling shadow’ doesn’t live more in that wood than anywhere else. It follows nervous children upstairs to bed, when they daren’t look over their shoulders, and comes and sits on your grandfather’s summer seat beside two friends when they have talked too much nonsense in the dark. I hope you have an illustration ready for this chapter?

I am still at the ‘Arcadia’, which you will gather from this is a long book, though not a bit too long. I won’t make you sick of it before you see it by starting to sing its praises again: I only promise you that I am still as keen on it as when I began. By the way, now that we are both writing, and know how much work there is in a short instalment that can be read in a few minutes, you begin to realize the labour of writing a thing say like the ‘Morte D’Arthur’.

I gather from your silence that you are doing nothing in the gramophone way? Ask the Girlinosbornes whether my new record of ‘Is not His word like a fire’105 (ordered last holidays) has come yet or not. I hope it will be waiting for me when I get home: which event–do you realize–will happen in about a month. This term has gone terribly quickly and been very pleasant, but all the same I shall not be sorry to take up my other life again.

What new books are there of yours to see? I am longing to have a look at your De Quincey and ‘Rossetti’. By the way, I suppose you never looked up the passage about the ‘bore’ nor the one in William Morris about Hylas and the nymphs? I have now finished my Tristan, which is really delightful: it is the saddest story on earth I think, don’t you? I have written for the French Everyman translation of ‘Roland’ which ought to have come by now, but hasn’t. I am interested to see what the binding is like, aren’t you?

You will see by the scrawl that I am trying to write about a million miles an hour as everyone has gone to bed. So goodnight old man: send another instalment next week, I am so interested in your adorable fairy.

Yrs.,

Jack

P.S. By the way, one criticism just to keep you from getting your head turned. Don’t talk about Dennis as ‘our young friend’ or ‘our hero’–the last is like a newspaper: at least you may take it as a suggestion just for what it is worth.–J.

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 102-3):

[Gastons

7 July 1916]

My dear Papy,

Your ‘essay’ and letter arrived, and Kirk read me a great part of the former. I think what you say about Christ Church is probably right, although Kirk tells me that there is most certainly a reading set, which one could live in. However, Dod[d]s specially recommends New, and as you say yourself, both it and Oriel are in the first rank. On the other hand, I am afraid that there will be no more ‘Guards Regiments’ anywhere by the time I reach Oxford: the old ‘bloods’ have mostly been shot, and the atmosphere of an after-war England will not be conductive to the birth of a new generation. Fortunately, there is no hurry about the question, and we can talk it over together in comfort next holidays.

Yes! It would be true irony if we ran upon something of the James or Capron type again; our little portrait gallery for that never-written novel is already getting crowded. By the way, what do you think of the new arrangement about Ulster? Kirk has talked about it for nearly a week: not that he has any views on either side, but he seems to find a pleasure in balancing off all the arguments for and against the proposal: so well has he succeeded that I am beginning to think ‘That way lies madness.’106 No sooner have we made up our minds on one side, than we are immediately floored by a new point that he brings up on the other. What do you think about it?

I must deprecate those very questionable references to my unfortunate last term’s exodus from Gastons: if I saw that the goodwife of the house was, like Martha ‘careful over many things,’107 and then tactfully suggested that I might go home, what do you find extraordinary in such an action? At any rate, though we have our faults, we don’t make ourselves ridiculous in an open carriage, nor lose our way in a country we have known from childhood. To be sensible, I suppose the term will end, as you say, at the end of July.

Many thanks for both your enclosures. The letter was from my old Malvern study companion Hardman: he is going to be conscripted at Christmas, and wants to know what I am going to do. I am writing to say that I don’t know yet, but will tell him as soon as our plans are settled. Of course if it turned out to be convenient, I should like to have a friend with me in the army, but it is hardly worth while making any special provisions for so small a matter. We shall see how it all works out.

Your reference to the two books is tantalizing. I quite agree with you that they should be put in a safe place: and the safest place in Leeborough is a certain ‘little end room’ where all the footsteps point one way. I for my part am still at my ‘Arcadia’ which I find excellent.

The weather here is ridiculous: wintry colds alternating with hot, close fogs, and an occasional thunder shower. I don’t know what the farmers will do.

your loving

son Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (LP V: 106-8):

[Gastons

11 July 1916]

My dear Arthur,

I am very glad to hear that you are getting to like Jason: I agree with you that the whole description of Medea–glorious character–going out by night, and of her sorceries in the wood is absolutely wonderful, and there are other bits later on, such as the description of the ‘Winter by the Northern River’ and the garden of the Hesperides, which I think quite as good. Curiously enough I have just started the Argonautica’108 the Greek poem on the same subject, and though I haven’t got very far–only in fact to the launching of Argo–it is shaping very well. It will be interesting to compare this version with Morris’s, although indeed the story of the Golden Fleece is so perfect in itself that it really can’t be spoiled in the telling. Don’t you find the very names Argo’ and ‘Argonauts’ somehow stirring?

I thought a person like you would sooner or later come to like poetry: by the way, of course you are quite right when you talk about thinking more of the matter than of the form. All I meant when I talked about the importance of form was to carry a little further what you already feel in prose–that is how some phrases such as the Wall of the World, or at the Back of the North Wind affect you, partly by sound partly by association, more than the same meaning would if otherwise expressed. The only difference is that poetry makes use of that sort of feeling much more than prose and produces those effects by metre as well as by phrase. In fact, the metre and the magic of the words should be like the orchestration of a Wagnerian opera–should sort of fill the matter by expressing things that can’t be directly told–that is, it expresses feeling while the matter expresses thought. But I daresay I have given you my views on the subject before. I am very flattered that you remember that old line about the ‘garden where the west wind’ all these months, and will certainly copy out anything that is worth it if you can find me a shop in dear Belfast where I can buy a decent MS book: I have failed in that endeavour so far.

So we are to be treated to more and more modesty? Indeed Arthur if I could get a little of your diffidence, and you a little of my conceit we should both be very fine fellows. This week’s instalment is quite worthy of the other two, and I was quite disappointed when it broke off. The reeds ‘frightened out of their senses’ and shouting in ‘their loudest whisper’ are delightful. ‘Our Lady of the Leaf might be kept in mind as a possible title if you don’t care for the present one.

You are rather naive in telling me that you ‘have to sit for a minute thinking’ and ‘find the same word coming in again’ as if these weren’t the common experiences of everyone who has ever written. I haven’t noticed any smallness in the vocabulary you employ for your tale, and anyway that’s just a matter of practice. By the way, even if you didn’t mean it, I hope you see now what I am driving at about the remark of Dennis as to his clothes. As to the ‘sitting for ten minutes’, I don’t believe that good work is ever done in a hurry: even if one does write quickly in a burst of good form, it always has to be tamed down afterwards. I usually make up my instalment in my head on a walk because I find that my imagination only works when I am exercising.

Can you guess what I have been reading this week? Of all things in the world ‘Pendennis’!109 Isn’t this the one you find too much for you? I am nearly through the first volume and like it well so far: of course one gets rather sick of Pen’s everlasting misbehaviour and the inevitable repentance going round and round like a mill wheel and there doesn’t seem much connection between one episode and another. All the same, it has a sort of way with it.

That feast the ‘Arcadia’ is nearly ended: in some ways the last book is the best (though a little spoiled I admit by brasting) and here the story is so like the part of Ivanhoe where they are all in Front-de-Boeuf’s castle, that I think Scott must have borrowed it.110 Your remarks about C. Rosetti’s poems are very tantalizing and I am longing to see them. How I do love expensive books if only I could afford them. Apropos of which, do you know anything of the artist Beardesley?111 I fancy he was the man who started the modern school of ‘queer’ illustrations and the like: well I see you can get for £1.5s. a 1 vol. edition of Malory with his illustrations, published by Dent. What do you think it would be like? I only wish it was Macmillan and so we could have it on approval.

You are quite wrong old man in saying I can draw ‘when I like’. On the contrary, if I ever can draw, it is exactly when I don’t like. If I sit down solemnly with the purpose of drawing, it is a sight to make me ‘ridiculous to the pedestrian population of the etc.’. The only decent things I do are scribbled in the margins of my dictionary–like Shirley–or the backs of old envelopes, when I ought to be attending to something else.

I am quite as sorry as you that I can’t see my way to working Bleheris back into the Sunken Wood, for I think the idea might be worked a bit more: but don’t see how it is to be done without changing the whole plan of the story.

The immediate prospects of my getting married ‘agreeably or otherwise’ as you kindly suggest, are not very numerous: but if you are getting uneasy about an invitation, rest assured, when the event comes off, if you behave you shall have one.

It was strange that Mrs K. should get Hardy’s ‘Under the Greenwood Tree’112 out of the library last week, though I never got a chance of looking into it: somehow I don’t fancy Hardy is in my line, but then I always have a prejudice against people whom you’re always hearing about.

You say nothing about music now-a-days, and I am afraid I scarcely think of it: it annoys me hugely to think of the whole world of pleasures that I used to have and can’t enjoy now. Did you see a long article in the Times Literary Supplement113 about the ‘Magic Flute’114 which is on at the Shaftesbury? How I wish I could go up and hear it and also ‘Tristan and Isolde’115–though if I did it would be a disappointment in all probability.

I am furious because in answer to my order for the ‘Chanson de Roland’ I am told it is out of print, which is very tiresome. Here I enclose another chapter, really all conversation this time, but can promise you a move next week. Don’t forget your own instalment which I look forward to very eagerly. Good night.

Yours,

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 105-6):

[Gastons

14? July 1916]

My dear Papy,

This must be nipped in the bud: there can be no question of that. Get your lady friend’s visit over before the end of this month, at all costs, or else bid them avaunt till the winter.116 What should I do, left alone all day to face a situation of that sort? As well, the whole thing is tyranny, extortion, infliction, profligacy and arrogance of the worst sort, and therefore not to be borne. Have they not already taken more than their fair share of reprisals for our own visit so long ago? This ‘breakfast is a charming meal’ business can be overdone: however, a man can but die once, so I suppose destiny must take its course.

This is big news from the front, though whether it will have any permanent effect or not, of course we can’t say. The Ulster Division–what there are of them now–must have silenced the yapping politicians for ever.117 I suppose the losses are felt very heavily in Belfast: here, nobody seems to have noticed anything.

Yes, that wheeze about ‘pulled through’ ought to ‘supply a long felt want’: it can be used on every occasion and ought to live for a very long time. I am sorry if any obscurity on my part gave rise to the ‘savage emphasis,’ but then his ordinary style of conversation is so–I think the word is ‘nervous’ in its 18th Century sense, that best describes it–that we must not pay too much attention to such things. I think, as you say, that things point to New, but of course we will keep an open mind in the meantime.

The literary event of the week is our respected laureate’s ode in the Times Literary Supplement:118 truly a most remarkable production, though I am afraid like the honest Major in ‘Patience,’ I must confess that ‘it seems to me nonsense’.119 To do the man justice, the lines about Homer, the ones about the birds, the beginning of the vision, and a few other passages, are rather fine. But the habit of throwing in an odd rhyme here and there is rather uncomfortable: still, if you can lay your hand upon it (the Pattersonian pun is quite a mistake, owing to haste, as it is getting late and the others are going up) you might keep this number.

I am at present in the middle of a book called ‘Pendennis’ which I should advise you to read unless I knew your prejudice against the author: however, one of these days you will come round and ‘see my point.’

your loving,

son,

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (LP V: 111-13):

[Gastons]

Tuesday evening, the I

don’t know whath,

18] July /16.

My dear Arthur,

I can’t understand why you should want to know the dates on which these gems of wit were written: if you should ever happen to look at them in the future, a date is a meaningless thing and it won’t really help you to see a few numbers written on the top. For my part, when I read your old letters, I don’t think about such nonsense. I classify them not by time but by the stage in our thoughts at which they were written: I say ‘Ah, that was when we were talking about Loki, this was when we talked much about music and little about books, we didn’t know each other so well when this was written’ and so on. Which is far more sensible than saying, ‘This was September 1914, that was August 1915.’ As well, the fact that everyone else puts a date on their letters is to me an excellent reason for not doing so. Still, if you are really concerned about it, I suppose I must ‘bow myself in the house of Rimmon’.120 Since I have gone so far as to put a date however, you can’t be so unreasonable as to suggest that it should be the right one.

I am awfully bucked about ‘Twelfth Night’:121 I thought at the time you remember, that Heath Robinson’s illustrations were absolutely perfect–quite as good as Rackham’s, though of course in a different style. If I remember aright there is a splendid one on the line ‘How full of shapes is fancy’122 and also some fine evening cloud effects–not to mention the jester in the rain and the delightfully ‘old English’ garden scenes.

I am longing, as you say, to be at home and to go over all our treasures both old and new:–so of course we shall be disappointed in some way. As you say, you are extravagant, but I too at present buy one book as soon as I have finished another.

The Arcadia’ is finished: or rather I have read all there is of it, for unfortunately it breaks off at a most exciting passage in the middle of a sentence. I will not praise it again, beyond saying that this last 3rd. book, though it has no such fine love passages as the 2nd., yet (despite the brasting), for really tip-top narrative working the interest up and up as it goes along, is quite worthy of Scott.

This week’s new purchase consisted of Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’–in the same edition as my Mandeville123–and ‘John Silence’ in the 7d. edition. Just as one sometimes has a spell of being disappointed in new books, so at other times you keep on getting one treat after another. For the first few pages of John Silence I was hardly in the right mood: but after that it fairly swept me off my feet, so that on Saturday night I hardly dared to go upstairs. I left off-until next week end–in the middle of the ‘Nemesis of Fire’–Oh, Arthur, aren’t they priceless? Particularly the ‘Ancient Sorceries’ one, which I think I shall remember all my life. Oh, that evil dance, and the ‘muttering the old, old incantation’! The feeling of it all chimed with a lovely bit of ‘Paradise Lost’ which I read the same evening where it talked of the hounds that,

’…Follow the night hag, when, called In secret riding through the air she comes Lured with the smell of infant blood, to dance With Leopard witches, while the labouring moon Eclipses at their charms.’124

Don’t you like the Leopard witches? How you will love Milton some day! By the way we may remark in passing that John Silence is one of the nicest 7d’s in paper and so forth that I have ever seen. I wonder how people would laugh if they could hear us smacking our lips over our 7d’s and Everymans just as others gloat over rare folios and an Editio Princeps? But after all, we are surely right to get all the pleasure we can, and even in the cheapest books there is a difference between coarse and nice get up. I wonder what a book called ‘Letters from Hell’ published at 1/-by Macmillan would be like?’125

This week’s instalment I enjoyed especially: the idea of the hair so beautiful to the eye so coarse to the touch is very suggestive, and you keep us in fine doubt as to whether your faery is going to turn out good and benevolent or terrible. You complain that your tale is commonplace, but I don’t know anything that you think is like it, and I hope that you will really never think of giving it up unfinished–all the same, if you do–for which I can see no earthly reason–don’t be discouraged, because we very rarely succeed in finishing a first work. If you saw the number of ‘beginnings’ I have made! By the by, there is one little point I must grouse at this week. You say that the faery resumed her ‘normal’ size. What was her normal size? We saw her first as a little figure on a leaf, and she hasn’t changed since. Do you mean that she took on human size? Of course a few trifling changes when you revise will make this quite clear. The point of names is rather difficult: ‘Dennis’ I like, but the old Irish attractions of ‘Desmond’ are very strong. I really don’t know what I should advise.

I am sorry you disapprove of my remarks in the romance. But you must remember that it is not Christianity itself I am sneering at, but Christianity as taught by a formal old priest like Ulfin, and accepted by a rather priggish young man like Bleheris.126 Still, I fear you will like the main gist of the story even less when you grasp it–if you ever do, for as is proper in romance, the inner meaning is carefully hidden.

I am really very sorry to hear about your new record, but so many of your Odeons have been successful that I cannot reasonably have the pleasure of saying ‘I told you so’. Talking about music, I have at last found out the exact number of the Chopin piece I like so well–it is the 21st Prelude. Look it out, and tell me if it is not the best music in the world?