Collected Letters Volume One: Family Letters 1905–1931

As for your kind enquiries about the approaching natal gift, I have made up my mind that I should like ‘The Rhinegold and the Valkyries’ to match the ‘Siegfried and Twilight of the Gods’ which I have got.

(#ulink_15e0ec2d-e035-50a4-9558-536dcceb5181) I think however that the purchase of the book had better be deferred until Xmas when I can talk to my friend Carson in person.

I am glad to hear that W. is coming down at the end of the term as it is nicer travelling ‘in comp.’ than alone. I must stop now. How are you yourself keeping these days?

your loving

son,

Jack.

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 108-9):

The Sanatorium,

Thursday or Friday.

(I am not quite sure what

day it is today)

Postmark: 28 November 1913

My dear Papy,

I have advanced yet another stage and am now enjoying the priveledge of being downstairs in the San. That is, instead of sitting up in my bedroom, I have been moved to a sitting room where I can look out upon the hideously ugly garden of the San. And yet there is a homely touch about this garden. It is full of laurels that will never grow because of the wind: we’ve seen these before haven’t we?

I have been condemned by the school doctor, as soon as I go back, to join the ranks of people who do ‘special exercises for delicate chests’ in the gym. This is a piece of ‘sconce’ after your own heart, and I have no doubt that you will be more pleased to hear about it than I was. Your remarks about the sealskin etc. strike me as being both in questionable taste and the products of a fevered imagination rather than of a sane mind. But still, the human mind is so constituted that the bizarre must ever appeal more potently than the normal. Which is a consolation.

Congratulations on your victory at the Pattersonian musical festival. You’ll be becoming quite a noted Strandtown diner out if you are not careful.

Talking about social functions reminds me of some wild fantastic talk of another dance this year.

(#ulink_a4eed4f0-3f51-5fe0-9b41-3d4b9a81a521) Don’t let us spoil the Xmas holidays by a chore as colossal as it is disagreeable, and as disagreeable as it is unnecessary. No one else gives a dance on two consecutive years. Nip this matter in the bud ‘which has a bitter taste’ and of which ‘sweet will not be the flower’. (Do you remember the quotation?) But seriously, I hope no such folly is really toward. It is quite bad enough having to attend the functions of others without adding to the nuisance ourselves. Please convey to Aunt Annie and the other conspirators that you are determined not to hear of it, as I am sure you are. For one thing it is a considerable and uncalled for expense, and an expense of the most annoying kind–namely where you get absolutely no return for your money: unless you derive any great pleasure from hovering about among the noisy and objectionable throng who have invaded the pristine seclusion of Leeborough. But I don’t fancy that you do. I am certain that I don’t.

One good thing is that there are only three more weeks or so this term. I suppose W. will have both tickets when it comes to travelling. Is it next Tuesday or the Tuesday after that his exam comes off?

As to your remarks about the school san., in spite of smoky chimneys and a villainous domestic staff, there are a good many worse places to spend a few weeks of a long winter term. There are plenty of books and fires, and I always derive a certain savage pleasure in sitting with my feet on the fender, watching through the window a body of my unfortunate fellow beings setting off for a run across that cold, dismal golf links that always reminds me of the moorland in ‘Locksley Hall’.

Talking about ‘Locksley Hall’, I have discovered a tattered copy of Tennyson’s works here, buried among the sixpenny novels and illustrated weeklies, with which I have spent a few enjoyable afternoons reading ‘In memoriam’

(#ulink_f4587601-e1dd-581e-8060-8a10abdb7452) and some other things that one ought to know.

your loving

son Jack.

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 111):

The Sanatorium,

St. Andrew’s Rd.,

Sunday.

Postmark: 30 November 1913

My dear P.,

I am now I think really quite better and shall be leaving the San. in a few days. It is funny, isn’t it, how soon you get accustomed to a new kind of life? I’ve been down here for a fortnight or so, and I have grown so used to it that I could almost believe that Malvern never existed. But I shall be amply reminded of its life shortly. I am beginning to go out now on those intensely dull convalescent walks–progressing at two miles an hour, muffled up like an arctic explorer, and getting in the bits of sunshine. Thanks very much for the postal order which arrived yesterday. One good thing about being down at the san. is that it prevents your spending money, which is always an advantage.

For three days during this week I have had a companion–one Waley

(#ulink_473adb4d-fd8b-5e12-8cd8-2a20352a5d2d) of the School House, who had a boil on his arm and talked an amazing amount of agreeable nonsense. I pretended to be interested in and to understand his explanation of how an aeroplane engine works, and said ‘yes’ and ‘I see’ and ‘really’ at suitable intervals. I think I did all that was required very well.

However I am very pleased that he’s gone, as I find my own society infinitely more agreeable than his, and prefer Tennyson to lectures, however learned, on aeronautics. That’s just the perversity of fate. Anyone else who’d been down here alone for a fortnight would have been longing for a companion and of course wouldn’t get one, while I, who have been thoroughly enjoying the solitude, (so rare a blessing at school), must have not only a companion, but a talkative one, dumped down. However it was only for three days.

You were saying the other day that when you sat doing nothing of an evening you passed the time in day dreams. I used to day dream a tremendous lot, but these last few days I find when I sit down in a nice chair in front of the fire that I get up an hour later and realise that I’ve been thinking about absolutely nothing. Is this a sort of mental stagnation I wonder.

Have you seen to the quashing of that dance conspiracy yet? Don’t dare to answer in the negative. At any rate there must be no dance for me; nor for any other rational being I hope. So let that matter receive your immediate attention. You have your orders. Now we may go on.

I suppose the winter has set in at home by now, as it has here. But a very different kind of winter is the good old Belfast ‘rainy season’ from the English equivalent. Have you been winning any more musical laurels? That is a deed of daring do which should be set up in ‘letters all of gold’ (vide ‘brave Horatius’)

(#ulink_65f6ca03-aa98-5d22-9ca6-b5ab4ac3c774) under a statue in the hall representing you with a symbolical lyre and ‘plectrum’. (Look ‘plectrum’ out in a dictionary of classical terms).

your loving

son Jack.

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 115):

School House,

Malvern College.

Postmark: 8 December 1913

My dear Papy,

I am now once more safely ensconced in the house, and so my illness is officially dead and buried. Unfortunately I have missed the Lea Shakespeare exam., in which I think I might have done something. However, these things will happen. There are only two more weeks ‘and odd days’ as they say in Romeo and Juliet,

(#ulink_f684b88f-41e7-5228-84a1-259ed8f19b31) now. I suppose we shall revise this week and have exams. next, so that the routine is practically over. Write and tell me about W’s exam as soon as possible.

We have settled down into real winter weather here, which is always rather pleasing.

I notice in your recent correspondance an absence of any answer to my remarks re the quashing of the dance conspiracy. What is the meaning of this? Am I to understand that it has not been duly slain and buried? If not, why not? As I said before–‘you have your orders’. They were put before you in a plain and forcible manner so that you have no excuse for misunderstanding them. I hope to hear by return of post that the matter is now a thing of the past.

I can quite believe that the Peacockean platitudes were a come down after grandfather’s production.