Collected Letters Volume One: Family Letters 1905–1931

52 (#ulink_3c3d441c-d889-5e1b-b9c6-50a7096e5c94) The programme at the London Coliseum between 19 and 24 October included the Imperial Russian Ballet’s performance of Fleurs d’Orange and G.P. Huntley acting in Eric Blore’s A Burlington Arcadian.

53 (#ulink_3c3d441c-d889-5e1b-b9c6-50a7096e5c94) Ludwig van Beethoven, Sonata No. 8, ‘Pathétique’ (1799).

54 (#ulink_a4fd3dd2-38e7-5884-a66d-352ccbbf639e) Robert Bagehot Porch (1875-1962) was a pupil at Malvern College 1888-94. From there he went to Trinity College, Oxford, receiving his BA in 1898. He joined the staff of Malvern College in 1904 and taught there most of his life.

55 (#ulink_1e9afa62-de10-581b-9300-bc9d051aed11) Prince Louis of Battenburg (1854-1921) was born in Austria. He moved to England when he was a boy and had risen through the ranks of the Royal Navy to become First Sea Lord. Despite all that Winston Churchill could do, as first lord of the Admiralty, Prince Louis was forced to resign. He relinquished his German titles and the family name was changed to Mountbatten.

56 (#ulink_1e9afa62-de10-581b-9300-bc9d051aed11) ‘The voice of the people is the voice of the Devil’.

57 (#ulink_f6e35c78-96d0-5918-9a46-c79e7d0245b7) W.B. Yeats had published many Celtic plays. Lewis may have been thinking of his Plays for an Irish Theatre (1911).

58 (#ulink_4958be5e-6c38-5ee9-bfff-ab8824741bc6) Warnie crossed to France with the Army Service Corps on 4 November. They were part of the British Expeditionary Force stationed at Le Havre.

59 (#ulink_7ae63c32-a1b2-56bc-bc89-b6c479773d6f) Guy Nicholas Palmes (1894-1915) entered Malvern in 1908, and left in 1911 for the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. He joined the Yorkshire Light Infantry at the beginning of the war and was promoted to lieutenant in 1915. He was killed in action near Ypres on 9 May 1915.

60 (#ulink_59704bdd-a139-5869-b9b6-6d89d9bdcc7e) He meant William Morris’s The Well at the World’s End (1896).

61 (#ulink_59704bdd-a139-5869-b9b6-6d89d9bdcc7e) William Morris, Sigurd the Volsung (1876).

62 (#ulink_59704bdd-a139-5869-b9b6-6d89d9bdcc7e) William Harrison Ainsworth, Old St Paul’s (1841).

63 (#ulink_c6776f8e-b5b2-59d1-bb86-211ebd660f59)Le Morte D’Arthur is the title generally given to the cycle of Arthurian legends by Sir Thomas Malory, finished in 1470 and printed by Caxton in 1485. The version Lewis began with was Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory, with an introduction by Professor Rhys, 2 vols., Everyman’s Edition [1906].

64 (#ulink_c6776f8e-b5b2-59d1-bb86-211ebd660f59) John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667).

65 (#ulink_a84ef5e2-6b3b-5783-b1d1-991be51fe3aa) This was probably Mrs Kirkpatrick’s ‘theatrical’ friend, Miss MacMullen, whom Lewis mentioned to his father on 13 October.

66 (#ulink_ca3de3eb-c37e-59ed-8255-f5085de137d3) Mr Russell was a harmless, but terrifying, lunatic who was for many years a well-known figure in and around St Mark’s.

67 (#ulink_72221a7b-1e86-5f57-b583-0695a7833546) ‘O dearest brother, I am sorry not to have written.’

68 (#ulink_6ac1ef8c-6984-5615-b92a-dcf47b265b8f) An opera by Charles Gounod, based on the Faust of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and first produced in 1859.

69 (#ulink_6ac1ef8c-6984-5615-b92a-dcf47b265b8f)Il Trovatore, an opera by Giuseppe Verdi, was first performed in 1853.

70 (#ulink_38da6b6f-a575-5eae-a4e6-594ab46ece62)Samson et Dalila, an opera by Camille Saint-Saëns, was first performed in 1877.

71 (#ulink_38da6b6f-a575-5eae-a4e6-594ab46ece62) Daniel Auber’s opera Fra Diavolo was first performed in 1830.

72 (#ulink_38da6b6f-a575-5eae-a4e6-594ab46ece62) W.S. Gilbert (1836-1911), playwright and librettist, and Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900), composer, together wrote many very popular operettas. They include The Pirates of Penzance performed in 1879, The Mikado performed in 1885, and The Yeoman of the Guard performed in 1888.

73 (#ulink_cd388947-cea4-5054-9ae2-6566f17548e9) ‘Bright Star of Eve’ is from Charles Gounod’s New Part Songs (1872 or 1873).

74 (#ulink_cd388947-cea4-5054-9ae2-6566f17548e9) Camille Saint-Saëns’s orchestral work Danse Macabre was first performed in 1872.

75 (#ulink_cd388947-cea4-5054-9ae2-6566f17548e9) ‘March of the Dwarfs’ is a piano piece in Edvard Grieg’s Lyriske Stykker (1891).

76 (#ulink_ef939025-d7a9-5339-8d1f-d3f41a8045f9) Their mother’s sister, Mrs Lilian ‘Lily’ Suffern (1860-1934), wrote to Warnie on 3 February 1915 about the book party. ‘On 21st Dec.,’ she said, ‘Kelsie gave a book party which was very amusing… Some of the books were very good–too good for me, for I couldn’t guess them. Your father’s was Edged Tools, a fan and a knife. Clive’s was The Three Musketeers– a bit of paper with “Soldier’s Three” on it, it made us all mad because it was so plain, and we did not (many) guess it. Miss Murray’s was a cutting from that day’s Newsletter of the birthdays–The Newcomes. Another cutting from the Newsletter won the prize–Advt. of rise in the price of coals–The Sorrows of Satan. No one hardly guessed Hugh McCreddy’s–yet it was very good–a picture of a man with his mouth wide open in a laugh–L’’Homme Qui Rit. I had a picture of the Kaiser, nicely framed in ribbon–The Egoist (Meredith). Everyone guessed it The Lunatic at Large. Three old ladys sitting talking (picture of), tied with green ribbon was Gossips Green. Willie Jaffe’s was bad–a black African with a white line down it–Across the Dark Continent’ (LP IV: 289-90).

(Henry Seton Merriman wrote With Edged Tools (1894); Alexandre Dumas wrote The Three Musketeers (1844-5); William Makepeace Thackeray wrote The Newcomes (1853-4); Marie Corelli wrote The Sorrows of Satan (1895); Victor Hugo wrote L’’Homme Qui Rit (1869); George Meredith wrote The Egoist (1879); Joseph Storer Clouston wrote The Lunatic at Large (1899); Alice Dudeney wrote Gossips Green (1906); and Sir Henry Morton Stanley wrote Through the Dark Continent (1878).)

Kelso Ewart (1886-1966) was the fourth child of Lady Ewart, the cousin of Flora Lewis, and her husband Sir William. See The Ewart Family in the Biographical Appendix.

77 (#ulink_ef939025-d7a9-5339-8d1f-d3f41a8045f9) Mary Elizabeth ‘Lily’ Greeves (1888-1976) was Arthur Greeves’s sister. She married Lewis’s cousin Charles Gordon Ewart (1885-1936) on 15 December 1915. See The Ewart Family in the Biographical Appendix.

78 (#ulink_ef939025-d7a9-5339-8d1f-d3f41a8045f9) This was Arthur’s brother, William Edward Greeves (1890-1960).

79 (#ulink_58e265e9-288f-5e8e-95b6-3095f0a92256) Robert Heard Ewart (1879-1939). See The Ewart Family in the Biographical Appendix.

80 (#ulink_1bb25452-2d1f-5ea6-8662-db639f09fc5a) Carrie Tubb (1876-1976) was an English soprano much in demand as an oratorio singer. She was a favourite singer of operatic excepts, notably the final scene of Richard Wagner’s Götterdämmerung.

1915 (#ulink_67e20052-6d14-5f52-be94-d7517096fe55)

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 285-6):

[Gastons

24? January 1915]

(#ulink_cf1bc0ea-1223-5f6a-ac0d-0a78b6bb1b9f)

My dear Papy,

I have arrived and settled down here in due course, and everything progresses favourably, including the German. We had it snowing hard all day on Thursday, beautiful snow and bright frosty sun until Saturday, and are now enduring the thaw. (Yes; I did change my socks. No; there are no holes in my shoes. Yes, thanks, I have plenty of warm underclothing.) I hope you have by this time got rid of your cough, and, did I not know the utter futility of so doing, I should advise you to be careful. However, as you will doubtless reply, my playing the anxious adviser of a patient who will not obey orders, is rather like Satan rebuking sin.

(#ulink_f6b570c0-1e8d-51a4-83df-76d1b6154df9) But all joking apart, do take any care of yourself that you reasonably can, and don’t refuse harmless precautions for no reason.

That Smythe boy, the brother of the one who lost his arm, was home for a few days and lunched at Gastons on Wednesday: he tells us that his brother is going out again as soon as he is better–so hard are we pressed that even cripples whose worth is known will be taken in some departments! What this argues as to the paucity of our troops in general, and the old officer’s contempt for the new volunteers who are to come, you will readily imagine. Smythe also directly contradicts the reports of the newspapers about the Indian troops whom he declares to be worthless, and absolutely unfitted for trench fighting: they have too, an unpleasant habit of not burying their dead, which contributes a good deal to the discomfort of European men anywhere near. But of course this is only one man’s story, and the longer this war goes on the less credulous we become. Kirk has many amusing reflections, as usual, on the present crisis, especially when the curate came in yesterday at afternoon tea and told a number of patriotic lies about Germany and the Germans. Kirk then proceeded with great deliberation to prove step by step that his statements were fallacious, impossible, and ridiculous. The rest of the party including Mrs. K., Louis, and myself enjoyed it hugeously.

Thanks for my Classical Library which I have received. In the course of the week I shall return Munro’s Iliad I-XII

(#ulink_1a878f90-e5a5-58d2-a0fa-b00bac654868) which was not asked for: after which fact has been explained gently to Carson you will tell his remains to give you in exchange Merry’s Odyssey I-XII,

(#ulink_b4eb3cb3-40e2-5af8-8b2b-dba92ddc555c) which was asked for. Kirk also tells me to ask for ‘Tacitus’s Agricola’,

(#ulink_dc20e524-6a89-571c-9cb0-72b6a1db7dad) any edition except Macmillan’s.

your loving son,

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W/LP IV: 286-7):

[Gastons

26 January 1915]

My dear Arthur,