Collected Letters Volume One: Family Letters 1905–1931

[Malvern College]

Postmark: 22 March 1914

My dear Papy,

What a good thing the police did not turn up to arrest Craig.

(#ulink_a9d746fe-3861-5993-a8c7-47c92fcab2d7) If they had, I suppose you would be in the thick of it now.

No: I think I had better wait till the Tuesday and attend the House Supper. Not that I want to of course, but Maxwell and all the other Irish boys are waiting as it is Jimmy’s last term, and you can’t very well go early this time. So please book the berth for that night.

In common justice I feel that I ought to correct the notion which, very naturally, I have given you of Hichens. It is only fair to say that he is always ready to do anything he can for me or for anyone else. But the truth of the matter is that, though nominally head of the house, he has to mind his P’s and Q’s very carefully. The real head of the house is a splendid physical animal called Browning, who is one of the worst cads I have ever met. But he certainly has got ‘guts’ and bends the other prefects to his will with a rod of iron. They are all afraid of him. But Hichens, although neither clever or strong minded, is a kindly and gentlemanly sort of person. I have no complaints against him. But we are now so near the end of the term that I am beginning to take a philosophical view of things: all will soon be over.

Although the papers are full of it, the people here don’t seem to grasp the Ulster situation very much: one person asked me this morning if it was for Home Rule or against it that the volunteers were being formed.

Last night we had a lecture about Russia which was quite interesting.

your loving

son Jack.

Jack arrived at Little Lea on 25 March. His father, knowing how desperately unhappy he was at Malvern, was already in correspondence with Warnie about the matter. ‘Your news about Jack is unpleasant,’ Warnie said on 23 March,

but to me at least, not unexpected: from the moment he first came home and told me his opinion of the Coll., I was afraid it could only be a matter of time until he made the place too hot to hold him. I remember asking if it was not a splendid feeling at the end of a house match when you realised that your own house had won: “I saw a lot of boys throwing their caps in the air and making unpleasant noises: yes, I suppose it is an interesting study”…I had an idea that Malvern would weave its influence round Jacks as it did around me, and give him four very happy years and memories and friendships which he would carry with him to the grave…I am all in favour of sending him to Kirk. There would be no one there except Mr and Mrs K for him to talk to, and he could amuse himself by detonating his little stock of cheap intellectual fireworks under old K’s nose. (LP IV: 156-7)

Albert replied on 29 March:

I honestly confess that knowing Jack’s mind and character, I am not greatly surprised to find him and a Public School unsuited to one another. In saying that I blame neither the one nor the other. He is simply out of his proper environment, and would possibly wither and decay rather than grow if kept in such surroundings…What is to be done? For a boy like Jacks to spend the next three or four years alone with an old man like Kirk is almost certain to strengthen the very faults that are strongest in his disposition. He will make no acquaintances. He will see few people and he will grow more into a hermit than ever. The position is a difficult one and gives me many anxious hours. (LP IV: 160)

Albert asked Mr Kirkpatrick what he advised, and in his letter of 17 April he suggested that he send Jack back to Campbell College in Belfast. ‘The Campbell College is at your door,’ he said. ‘If he went there, he would be in contact with you, which ought surely to count for much at this period of growth…It is very kind of you to think of sending him to me, but do you not think it a little premature?’ (LP IV: 165). Mr Lewis persisted, almost begging Mr Kirkpatrick to accept him. ‘If he can hold on through this summer,’ Mr Kirkpatrick replied on 30 April, ‘I hope I shall be ready (if I am spared) to receive him in the autumn, if you are still in the same mind then. And here let me say that I feel almost overwhelmed by the compliment to myself personally which your letter expresses. To have been the teacher of the father and his two sons is surely a unique experience’ (LP IV: 167). Although Jack didn’t want to go back to Malvern for even one more term, Mr Lewis got him to agree to it as an ‘experiment’. If it became too bad, he would leave.

Sometime in mid-April, while this debate was going on, Jack came to know his ‘First Friend’. ‘His name was Arthur [Greeves]’ he wrote in SBJ VIII,

and he was my brother’s exact contemporary; he and I had been at Campbell together though we never met…I received a message saying that Arthur was in bed, convalescent, and would welcome a visit. I can’t remember what led me to accept this invitation, but for some reason I did.

I found Arthur sitting up in bed. On the table beside him lay a copy of Myths of the Norsemen.

(#ulink_afc4b0c9-b2bd-5138-ad85-2dfd2d710491)

‘Do you like that?’ said I.

‘Do you like that?’ said he.

Next moment the book was in our hands, our heads were bent close together, we were pointing, quoting, talking–soon almost shouting–discovering in a torrent of questions that we liked not only the same thing, but the same parts of it and in the same way…Many thousands of people have had the experience of finding the first friend, and it is none the less a wonder; as great a wonder…as first love, or even a greater. I had been so far from thinking such a friend possible that I had never even longed for one; no more than I longed to be King of England.

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 169-70):

[Malvern College]

Postmark: 3 May 1914

My dear Papy,

I suppose, when I come to think of the matter, it was rather foolish of me to write and ask for ‘a coat’, without specifying what kind. One is apt to imagine at times that the person to whom you speak can keep up with your thoughts, whether they are expressed or not. What I want is a common or garden jacket coat, same measurements as the last, and with not more than three buttons on the front.

There are now only some five weeks more. Thank goodness!! For to tell the truth, Malvern is hardly the place for a long stay. I think it would be as well to stick to our original plan of leaving at the end of the term. It is rather heavy going; the ceaseless round of fagging, hunting for clothes and books that have been ‘borrowed’, and other jobs that have to be done in what is euphemistically known as your ‘spare time’, gets very trying. It is literally true that from the time you get up in the morning till the time you go to bed at night, you have not a moment to spare.

And the worst of it all seems to be that I am not getting on too well in form. It’s discouraging. Whether it is that I haven’t time to do it, or that I’m losing my mental faculties, or the fact that it is getting harder, I don’t know: but the fact remains that things aren’t as they should be. Goodness knows, I work as hard as I can. But it’s all uphill. For instance, if you are hoping to do some of your surplus work in the interval between breakfast and morning school, it is very hard to have to give up that time to cleaning boots for some great big brute of a prefect at the bottom of the school. Then of course, as all your arrangements have been thrown out of joint, you don’t know the lesson. And you can’t give Smugy the real explanation. My chief dread is that he may get a bad impression, and I prize his opinion as much as that of any one. Then again, the whole atmosphere of the place is so brutal and unsavoury. In one word, it won’t do.

Of course this is no new discovery. We both agreed last holidays that it was only an experiment, and I am now giving the result of that experiment. There is no need for you to worry or to do anything other than we have already thought of. But I consider it better to let you know straight away that this place is a failure, than to leave the botch over until it is irreparable. I suppose Kirk’s is the best place for me. At any rate one of these ‘English Public Schools’, so famed in song and story, is not. To get on well at one of these, one needs to have a constitution of iron, a hide so thick that no insult will penetrate it, a brain that will never tire, and an intelligence able and ready to cope with the sharp gentlemen who surround you.

But these places are doomed. Books like the ‘Harrovians’ are the thin end of the wedge: and I don’t mind saying that if you came back in a couple of hundred years, there would be no Public Schools left. That is a sort of consolation: for, among other things, one learns here a power of hating with an almost incredible intensity. However, I suppose this sort of education is found to be suitable for some people. But on others it comes rather hard.

To turn to a brighter topic, I am very pleased to hear that W. is getting on well at Sandhurst. His letters to me are very cheerful, and at the same time more serious than some of his communications have been. All these facts point in the right direction.

In the mean time, how are things in the ancient and honourable city of Belfast? Perhaps all this unpleasantness in a foreign land has its use, in that it teaches one to love home and things connected with home all the more, by contrast. I suppose the aggravation of the social nuisance, which always accompanies Xmas has now died down. And what are the attractions at the popular houses of entertainment? Among other things that I want to know, has the great fire mystery been solved yet? It destroys my mental picture of Leeborough if I am not sure whether there still be a wall between the hall and the study or not. However, I am glad to say that I shall be able to see the whole thing for myself at no very distant date.

It is now half term, and there are only four or five weeks more. They will not be long in the going. I wonder is there any truth in the idea that a wise man can be equally happy in any circumstances. It suddenly struck me the other day that if you could imagine you were at home during the term, it would be just as good as the reality.

your loving

son Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 173-4):

[Malvern College]

Postmark: 17 May 1914

My dear P.,

I must really apologise elaborately and profusely for having left you letterless this week: but the fact is that this has been my first opportunity.

First of all, you will be interested to learn that our friend Browning has not, as he anticipated, been raised from the position of House Pre. to that of School Pre. Instead, a humble and inoffensive person named Parker

(#ulink_3b42f0d7-a33e-5bbf-9320-7631dfa4f833) has been placed above him; at which you may well imagine his chagrin and my delight.

The new headmaster

(#ulink_cee4d84f-9c94-56e4-b616-efef1b10fd8f) has created a good impression here already by making the servants clean our boots–thereby abolishing the most obnoxious source of fagging. So far he has spoken very little indeed, but when he speaks it is in a pleasant voice and in good English. He wastes no time. All this shapes very well, although (thank goodness) I shall not see much of his career.

Smugy’s wit on my late return did not exercise itself in my presence. But on the first day, as I am told, he expressed a fear lest I had been ‘killed in the war’. Ah, well! These people will soon learn that war is not a subject for joking; so for that shall we too.

The worst part of the summer term is the fact that we have to keep out of doors nearly all our time; but here one notices the great advantage of being in the Upper School, and therefore allowed to go into the Grundy Library at all hours of the day–it proves a great refuge when the ‘house’ is out of bounds.

(#ulink_02fca818-5593-56d2-89c9-a68db44ca1cf)

I have received a letter from Arthur Greeves. Intimate to him the fact that a suitable reply is being composed at our leisure. Note the royal plural. Well, it’s a good thing that two weeks at any rate have gone. How are the ‘rheumatics’ keeping? I suppose by this time you are in the depths of the house cleaning ceremony: have the study and hall been knocked into one, or any other funny thing happened?