Collected Letters Volume One: Family Letters 1905–1931

II.My thanks shall endure -The poor tribute I paid To a faith that was pure– Till my ashes be laidIn the urn; and the Stygian boatmen I seek, an impalpable shade. (Yes, but not Ovid.)

III.But nay! For the daysOf a mortal are few;Shall they limit your praiseNay rather to youEach new generation shall offer–if aught beremembered–your due.

IV.

For the lofty frame (hardly scans.)

That my VERSES ENFOLD,

Men still shall acclaim

Thro’ ages untold;

And still shall they speak of your virtue; your honour

they still shall uphold.

(Yes.)

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 192-3):

[Malvern College]

Postmark: 29 June 1914

My dear Papy,

On Friday I got a letter from you for the first time since this trouble, and glad I was to get it. It has been a bad business, but I am glad to see that you are over the worst of it now. Be careful of yourself, and take care that you don’t go back to your ordinary routine until you are thoroughly fit.

My mental picture of home is disturbed to a certain extent by your mention of a fire. Here, we are in the middle of a magnificent summer: day succeeds day with the same cloudless sky and parched earth, and the nights are hot and comfortless. But on the whole, fine weather is agreeable, and has, I think, a certain effect on the spirits. Thank you very much for the money, which will enable ‘the firm’ to live ‘en prince’ until the time of our exile be over, and I return to a lovelier country to lead a happier life.

On the Tuesday of this week an unusual thing happened. Smugy asked myself and another boy in the same form and house, by name Cooper, to motor over with him to a little place called Birchwood in the country, where we had tea at an inn, and took a long delightful walk through fields and woods to a place where we were again picked up by the car, and thus home again. It was indeed very kind of the old man, as I am sure he sees quite enough of us in school hours. We went through a very beautiful piece of country, far, far away to the N. West of the hills where we could never go in an ordinary walk. To me, tired as I was of the flat, plain, and ugly hills of Malvern, this region, with its long masses of rolling hills and valleys, variegated by close mysterious woods and cornfields, together with one or two streams, was an enchanted ground. The Malvern hills loomed as a dark mass not far off the horizon: seen at this distance, they had lost their sharpness of outline, and looked weird and unreal, but very beautiful.

Here, in the middle of all this, we came upon the little cottage which used to be the summer resort of Elgar,

(#ulink_c5f0fbaf-da12-5746-b286-9178a1c13f78) the composer, formerly an intimate friend of Smugy’s. The latter told us that Elgar used to say he was able to read a musical score in his hand, and hear in his mind not only the main theme of the music, but also the different instruments and all the side currents of sound. What a wonderful state of mind!

This week I have taken a course of A.C. Benson’s essays, which have impressed me very favourably indeed. Do you know them? He has a clear, simple, but melodious style, second as I think only to Ruskin, and the matter is always suggestive, weighty, and original. He always makes you think, which a book ought to.

your loving

son Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 196-7):

[Malvern College]

6/7/14

My dear Papy,

I was glad to get your letter on Saturday, as I was beginning to grow somewhat anxious about you. I am glad indeed to hear that you are on the mend, and hope that the term ‘mending’ will soon be out of place. So the report has come at last. Though I could have wished for something more effusive, still it is pleasing to note that it is an improvement on the last one, and I hope that the next in its turn will be a proportionate advance. Yes. I think the old man has some regard for me, but, it must be remembered that even if I were to return next winter, I should no longer be under him, as all our form are getting a shove to make way for the influx of new scholarship people.

This week I have enjoyed the doubtful privilege of having two teeth extracted, both of which had been bothering me a good deal off and on this term. The dentist, who is a thoroughly competent official, pronounced his verdict that as they had been tinkered with over and over again, and were now hopelessly rotten, they had better come out. So out they came, with gas, and I think it was a good job.

I am at present engaged in reading Newman’s poems:

(#ulink_b305b5f5-3141-502d-b4aa-134233694dc0) do you know them at all? They are very, very delicate and pretty, and are like nothing more than one of those valuable painted Chinese vases which a touch would destroy. I must except from this criticism the ‘Dream of Gerontius’,

(#ulink_e0e92817-96bb-55cd-a0a1-c4d2d708662d) which is very strongly written. But the rest are almost too delicate for my taste: it is a kind of beauty that I can’t very much appreciate.

We have had two thunderstorms this week, and their combined efforts have left the ground pretty much under water, which is a great relief, as it puts an end to that eternal cricket. I wonder which is the more fatiguing, being made to play oneself, or watching others play it? We have plenty of both here, and both are compulsory.

But to turn to a better theme, do you realise that there is barely a month more this term; and I am already beginning to look forward to the end of it. That, I think, is one of the really priceless pleasures of youth–this joy of home coming, the gradual approach to the familiar surroundings etc.–as an old friend of ours once said on another subject, ‘it can’t be beat’.

Which reminds me, has Arthur got the gramophone mended yet?

your loving

son Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 197-8):

[Malvern College]

Postmark: 13 July 1914

My dear Papy,

Although there has been no letter this week, I do hope that you have not had a relapse or anything, and that you are getting on all right.

This week we have had a Repton match here, and other things which must now be told. A nice impression truly these people will take back of Malvern and the Malvernians! One evening, during the game called ‘crockets’ (which is a kind of impromptu cricket played with soft balls on the stretch of gravel outside S.H.), two real knuts from Repton strolled up, and began watching at a distance: this is what they saw. Browning, whose ball had been hit over into Mr. Preston’s garden, turned round to an inoffensive person called Hamley,

(#ulink_f4cf3e49-fe81-552d-8a42-31a5ca568aed) who has just been made a prefect, and demanded the latter’s ball. This request was very naturally refused: whereupon our friend Browning proceeds to take it by force, and with many blows and oaths, succeeded in ejecting the other down the bank. Then, noticing the not unnatural mirth of the Reptonians at the sight of two public school prefects fighting and rolling in the mud like street boys, he turned round and told them in terms which I cannot reproduce, ‘not to grin at him’, with a great emphasis on the last word.

So this is our public school dignity, politeness and hospitality which we are always hearing about! These are the institutions that all other civilised countries envy us for, and would imitate if they could. Bah! I for one, will be glad to be rid of them all, and would like to see the day when they are abolished. But as for this Browning, perhaps we judged him too harshly. It is very true that we never know the data for any case but our own. I hear he is not happy at home: so that, although it may be that he is such a beast that he cannot be well treated, yet on the other hand it may be that he has been made into a beast. One never knows.

Last week we had an essay on the difference between Genius and Talent, and mine has been ‘sent up for good’, the ceremony which I told you of.

(#ulink_3d61f560-ae00-55db-b055-1261a41415c9) Only three weeks more now.

your loving

son Jacks

On Saturday, 19 September 1914 Jack arrived at Great Bookham to be met at the station by the man he’d heard about all his life, W.T. Kirkpatrick. ‘I came prepared,’ he later wrote in SBJ IX,

to endure a perpetual luke-warm shower bath of sentimentality. That was the price I was ready to pay for the infinite blessedness of escaping school…One story of my father’s, in particular, gave me the most embarrassing forebodings. He had loved to tell how once at Lurgan when he was in some kind of trouble or difficulty, the Old Knock, or the dear Old Knock, had drawn him aside and there ‘quietly and naturally’ slid his arm round him and rubbed his dear old whiskers against my father’s youthful cheek and whispered a few words of comfort…And here was Bookham at last, and there was the arch-sentimentalist himself waiting to meet me…He was over six feet tall, very shabbily dressed…lean as a rake, and immensely muscular. His wrinkling face seemed to consist entirely of muscles, so far as it was visible; for he wore moustache and side whiskers with a clean-shaven chin like Emperor Franz Joseph. The whiskers, you will understand, concerned me very much at that moment. My cheek tingled in anticipation…