Collected Letters Volume One: Family Letters 1905–1931

My dear Arthur,

Do you ever wake up in the morning and suddenly wonder why you have not bought such-and-such a book long ago, and then decided that life without it will be quite unbearable? I do frequently: the last attack was this morning à propos of Malory’s ‘Morte D’Arthur’, and I have just this moment written to Dent’s for it. I am drawing a bow at a venture and getting the Everyman two-shilling ‘Library’ edition.

(#ulink_ab2283b9-d07d-5663-ae7a-f5fbdbbf261e) What is it like, do you know? As for the book itself, I really can’t think why I have not got it before. It is really the English national epic, for Paradise Lost

(#ulink_9c9f0fcb-35a4-58a0-9753-c0bca32e18c5) is a purely literary poem, while it is the essence of an epic to be genuine folk-lore. Also, Malory was the Master from whom William Morriss copied the style of his prose Tales.

Which reminds me of your criticism of the ‘Well’. I quite see your point, and, of course, agree that the interests of the tale reach their climax in the great scene at the World’s End: my reply is that the interest of the journey home is of quite a different nature. It is pleasant to pick up all the familiar places and characters and see the same circumstances applied to the heroe’s new role of ‘Friend of the Well’. The Battle-piece at the end is very fine, and the ending, tho’, as was inevitable, conventional, leaves one in a pleasant, satisfied state of mind. The only part that I found really tedious was Roger’s historical survey of the Burg & the Scaur. In fact, Roger was only a lay-figure brought in to conduct the Ladye’s machinations with Ralph, and why he was not allowed to drop into oblivion when they were over, I cannot imagine.

How I run on! And yet, however many pages one may fill in a letter, it is only a tithe of what ten minutes conversation would cover: it is curious, too, how the thoughts that bubble up so freely when one meets a friend, seem to congeal on paper, when writing to him.

I wonder what you, who complain of loneliness when surrounded by a numerous family and wide circle of friends, would do if you could change places with me. Except my grinder and his wife, I think I have not spoken to a soul this week: not of course that I mind, much less complain; on the contrary, I find that the people whose society I prefer to my own are very few and far between. The only one of that class in Bookham, is still in the house, though they tell me she is up and about.

(#ulink_55fbb670-3eaf-518b-87ac-397f8a37e3d3) Of course, as they say at home, this solitude is a kind of egotism: and yet I don’t know that they are right. The usual idea is that if you don’t want to talk to people, you do so because you think they’re intellectually your inferiors. But its not a question of inferiority: if a man talks to me for an hour about golf, war & politics, I know that his mind is built on different lines from mine: but whether better or worse is not to the point.

My only regret at present is that I cannot see Co. Down in the snow: I am sure some of our favourite haunts look very fine. We have been deeply covered with it all week, and the pine wood near hear, with the white masses on ground and trees, forms a beautiful sight. One almost expects a ‘march of dwarfs’ to come dashing past! How I long to break away into a world where such things were true: this real, hard, dirty, Monday morning modern world stifles one. Progress in health and spirits and music! Write soon and give all your thoughts, actions, readings and any local gossip, for the benefit of

yours sincerely

Jack Lewis

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 246):

[Gastons]

Postmark: 20 November 1914

My dear Papy,

I received your answer this evening and decided to be guided by your views, or in other words my objections to the ‘Monstre’ holiday are not insuperable. Break the news gently to Kirk, as I am not sure he will relish the interruption.

I hope you will enjoy prosecuting dear Mr. Russell:

(#ulink_52253144-4f1b-5b75-ada5-a37e8d05a986) he will probably give you ‘something to be going on with’ in the way of back chat. Tell me any news of Warnie as soon as you hear it. I will stop now, as this is only a ‘letter extraordinary’.

your loving

son Jack

Lewis returned to Belfast on 28 November and was confirmed in St Mark’s on 6 December. Writing of this in SBJ X, he said: ‘My relations to my father help to explain (I am not suggesting they excuse) one of the worst acts of my life. I allowed myself to be prepared for confirmation, and confirmed, and to make my first Communion, in total disbelief, acting a part, eating and drinking my own condemnation.’

TO HIS BROTHER (LP IV: 276-7):

[Little Lea,

Strandtown.

22 December 1914]

(#ulink_60a80a9b-7a42-5fae-87ba-d548f894c046)–but perhaps I’d better write in English. This has become such a habit you know, but I beg your pardon.

It is a pity that you happen to be at the front just now, as–at last–an Opera Company came to Belfast while you were away. It was the ‘Moody Manners’, but that you have heard P. talking about. They were quite good, though somewhat early Victorian in the way of scenery and gestures. We went to ‘Faust’

(#ulink_951a3227-9369-5121-8cee-9527e40e9420) and ‘Trovatore’.

(#ulink_4ae737ca-7c42-5fad-a51f-fbe87a29c091) The former was perfectly glorious, well sung and everything. It is a very good opera and of course knowing a good deal of the music and having read Goethe, I enjoyed it very well. Of course I have discovered that it is no use expecting to hear the overture or preludes to the acts at Belfast, as everyone talks all the time as if nothing were going on. Il Trovatore, as we have always agreed, is a very mediocre thing anyway, and, with the exception of the soprano and baritone, was villainously sung. I don’t want to hear it again.

On the following Friday we got badly let down: the Glenmachonians Greeves’s and I had made up a party to go to ‘Samson and Delilah’,

(#ulink_24bfd7d7-f0b9-5525-b4c7-90f04341c39f) which we were all looking forward to immensely. Imagine our feelings when the cod at the door told us it has been changed to ‘Fra Diavolo’–a very inferior comic opera of Auber’s!

(#ulink_e3a65069-6659-5a15-8270-ea55195e86de) I seem to be fated never to get fair treatment from that theatre management. Fra Diavolo impresses on one how very badly the comic opera needed reform when Gilbert and Sullivan came to the rescue:

(#ulink_856da86a-f8f0-5aef-b30f-c50c2e68c0a4) it is the old style–bandits, a foolish English earl, innkeepers ‘and sich’. It was without exception the greatest drivel I ever listened to. There has been nothing worth noticing at the Hippodrome lately. Those two people–I’ve forgotten their names–who do the sketch about the broken mirror, were at the Opera House last week. The Opera House is now in the grip of that annual monstrosity the Grand Xmas Panto. I suppose I ought to be reconciled to it as fate by now. One good thing is that Tom Foy is coming, but of course the whole thing will be awfully patriotic.

I like your asking why I didn’t go to meet you in town. You omitted the trifling precaution of telling me your address–or did you intend that I should go up to a policeman in Piccadilly and ask, ‘Have you seen my brother anywhere?’

The new records are a most interesting and varied selection, comprising ‘The calf of gold’ from Faust, with a vocal ‘Star of Eve’

(#ulink_861550ac-94fb-5e13-a029-63cafed06b41) on the other side: the Drinking and Duel scenes from Faust: Saint Saen’s ‘Danse Macabre’:

(#ulink_bf531c67-cf94-52eb-8cac-d209434355dd) Grieg’s ‘March of the Dwarfs’:

(#ulink_e3aa19f7-187b-5409-82f5-4c9d3eddd157) and ‘Salve Minerva’ from Faust. There are also several new books, but most of them are not in your line: the only two you might care for are the works of Shelley and Keats.

We were up at Glenmachan yesterday (Monday) evening to a supper party of Kelsie’s where you went representing a novel.

(#ulink_874ae071-4f6b-5b10-930c-559cbb331202) All the usual push were there of course, and I quite enjoyed it. A number of people besides, whom I had never seen before, also turned up. There was one rather pretty thing whom Lily

(#ulink_8740eaed-acef-54d8-8a52-57e9e5c50bf4) is arranging as ‘suitable’ for Willie Greeves

(#ulink_6f7d424b-0525-5d8a-8f27-23b0ecebbba3)–in opposition I suppose to the Taylor affair. Of course it is all very nice, but don’t you thank the gods you haven’t got a sister?

One other piece of local gossip is so funny that you really must hear it. Do you know a vulgar, hideous old harridan on the wrong side of 40, a Miss Henderson, who lives at Norwood Towers? She’s just the sort of creature who would live there. Well the latest wheeze is that you meet her every time you go to Glenmachan, running after Bob.

(#ulink_cf2e2f50-a988-585e-bfb3-add4a40f5735) And the beauty of the thing is that she makes Bob bustle about and talk to her and flirt with her. I know you can’t imagine Bob ‘courtin’. I promise you it is a thing of beauty. While admiring the creature’s energy in getting a move on anyone like him, I don’t want her to get into the connection even as remotely as the sister in law of my second cousins.

You’re becoming quite a hero in your absence, and I can always command a large and attentive audience by spinning yarns about ‘The other day my brother, who is at the front etc.’ Hope is here now, and the Captain was home for a few days–I suppose you saw that he is now a Major? Why couldn’t you manage to get a few days off? You would at any rate have a change of clothes and diet if you did. Last week we went to the Messiah with Carrie Tubb

(#ulink_8f6fb250-13b9-5de3-adda-43194a0d997e) as soprano–she can sing, but she’s as ugly as the day is long. The contralto, altho she hadn’t much of a voice, was an improvement in that way–really quite a magnificent creature. Rather like the woman whom we met in France going about with the Katinarsky’s. I wondered if it was the same, but I suppose not, as the other would be younger. Of course Handel is not your ideal or mine as a composer: but it is always fair to remember that he wrote in the days of spinets and harpsichords, before anyone had discovered that there could be any point in music beyond a sort of abstract prettiness. Of course the inappropriateness of his tunes is appalling–as for instance where he makes the chorus repeat some twenty times that they have all gone astray like sheep in the same tone of cheerful placidity that they’d use for saying it was a fine evening.

Yes: the Kirk arrangement is absolutely it. The war is mainly interesting to him as illustrating some remark he made to ‘Mr. Dods’ fifty years ago. The only trouble about Bookham is our dear Mrs. Crutwell. I don’t know if it was the same in your time, but she has lately developed a mania for ‘seeing young people enjoying themselves’–and you know what that means. Write some time.

Yours, Jack

P.S. Did you ever get the letter I wrote from Larne?

1 (#ulink_f319ec33-6bc0-5191-82e5-28e8e3b55e01) William Eyre Hamilton Quennel (1898-?) entered School House the same term as Jack, and left Malvern in 1916. From there he went to Sandhurst, and in 1917 was gazetted into the 7th Dragoon Guards. He was promoted to lieutenant the same year. After the war he trained to be a doctor at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London. During World War II he served as medical officer in the Essex Yeomanry