Collected Letters Volume One: Family Letters 1905–1931

19? September 1908]

My dear Papy,

I suppose you got our telgy-graph to say that we were all right.

It was rather rough crossing, poor Warnie was very sea sick, I was sick once. Unfortunately Warnie was sick again in the train, also the breakfast car was so full that we could not get anything to eat till a long way after Crewe, we were both very hungry but when at last it came Warnie could not eat any worth talking about. When we arrived at Euston we saw both our trunks and plaboxs, the side of mine was dinged in. When we got to Watford the play-boxs were missing, evedently (though Warnie gave him 3d.) the porter had omitted to put them in at Euston. The railways officials think they can find them.

I cannot of course tell you yet but I think I shall like this place. Misis Capron and the Miss Caprons are very nice and I think I will be able to get on with Mr. Capron though to tell the truth he is rather eccentric.

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Anything we want Warnie is telling you about in his letter.

your loving son,

Jacksie

TO HIS FATHER (LP III: 147):

[Wynyard School]

Postmark: 29 September 1908

My dear Papy

Mr. Capron said some-thing I am not likely to forget ‘curse the boy’ (behind Warnie’s back) because Warnie did not bring his jam in to tea, no one ever heard such a rule before.

Please may we not leave on Saturday? We simply cannot wait in this hole till the end of term.

your loving

son Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP III: 149):

[Wynyard School]

Postmark: 3 October 1908

My dear Papy

We are getting on much better since Aunt Any’s visit.

(#ulink_3e51b66d-d834-5421-afc7-e62b11c03339) We went up to the Franco-British exhibition and enjoyed it very much, but I suppose Aunt Any has told you all about it.

Warnie was just a little sick last night and had to go to bed early and take 2 pills, he is quite well today but did not go to church. I do not like church here at all because it is so frightfully high church that it might as well be Roman Catholic.

You must excuse me writing a long letter as I have a lot of people to write.

your loving

son Jacks

The contrast between what was said of the church the boys of Wynyard attended–St John’s Church, Watford–and what it meant in retrospect is very great. In a little diary kept at Wynyard and dated November 1909, Jack said:

We…marched to church in a dismal column. We were obliged to go to St Johns, a church which wanted to be Roman Catholic, but was afraid to say so. A kind of church abhorred by respectful Irish Protestants. Here Wyn Capron, the son of our Head Master, preached a sermon better than his usual ones. In this abominable place of Romish hypocrites and English liars, the people cross themselves, bow to the Lord’s Table (which they have the vanity to call an altar), and pray to the Virgin. (LP III: 194)

Recalling it some years later in SBJ II, he said:

I have not yet mentioned the most important thing that befell me at [Wynyard]. There first I became an effective believer. As far as I know, the instrument was the church to which we were taken twice every Sunday. This was high Anglo-Catholic.’ On the conscious level I reacted strongly against its peculiarities–was I not an Ulster Protestant, and were not these unfamiliar rituals an essential part of the hated English atmosphere? Unconsciously, I suspect, the candles and incense, the vestments and the hymns sung on our knees, may have had a considerable, and opposite, effect on me…What really mattered was that here I heard the doctrines of Christianity (as distinct from general ‘uplift’) taught by men who obviously believed them.

TO HIS FATHER (LP III: 151):

[Wynyard School]

Postmark: 25 October 1908

My dear Papy,

Did you get my letter? Is Maud still with you, I hope so. How is your back?

I am very sorry you are so much annoyed at Mr. Capron’s letter, but it is quite untrue, Warnie is not lazy.

(#ulink_c4df8970-2580-5720-852d-0e0c36b94a0f) How is Ant Any? And now you must excuse me writing such a short letter, but as every day is the same as the last I have little or nothing to say.

your loving

son

Jacks

TO HIS FATHER (LP III: 154):

[Wynyard School]

Postmark: 22 November 1908

My dear Papy,

There are only 3 more Sundays this term, next one is my birthday. The term brakes up on 17th Thursday. How is your back? We have thought of a splendid new idea; a book club, it is going to be started next term, Warnie is going to get the Pearson’s, and I the Strand. Field is getting the Captain.

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I find school very nice but it is frightfully monotenis.

with love

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