Collected Letters Volume One: Family Letters 1905–1931

(#ulink_c73e8612-ec26-51d1-b0df-a5d5309b8f33) Which would you advise?

By the way, why is your letter dated Wednesday? It has arrived here this evening–Tuesday–am I to understand that you posted it tomorrow, or that you have been carrying it about in your pocket for a week?

Isn’t it awful about Harding? I hear from my father that Hope is going out.

(#ulink_5f8e3501-786a-57a5-a93a-08fb6badf6a4) I suppose that by this time the jeunes mariés have got into Schomberg.

(#ulink_a5763078-3739-5716-84ca-04beaea3e2f9) Why are your letters always so much shorter than mine? Therefore I stop.

Yours,

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 56-7):

[Gastons]

Postmark: 26 February 1916

My dear Papy,

‘Well I calls it ’ard’ as your friend used to say of the ’alf hour: I am accustomed, nay I am hardened to missing opera companies: but that I should be exiled in the wilds of England while Robin W. Gribbon and Lucius O’Brien

(#ulink_ff40ec87-27be-5bab-a4bf-65d37813a70c) are visiting Belfast–this is too utterly all but. But why might I ask are these nonconformist canals reciting in the school house of Saint Mark?

(#ulink_3c499b0e-bd05-57ea-949b-c6e9b5ffaf51) What have they to do with us? Let them get behind us. Joking apart, one might get a ‘running river of innocent merriment’ out of their efforts, ‘extremely stretched and conned with cruel pains’. Perhaps however you have your own reasons for reverencing the school house. Is it not the theatre of an immortal rendition of that ‘powerful’ role of Gesler,

(#ulink_6fc49550-8c14-53a5-876e-298ceb976797) and also of an immortal brick-dropping re an immortal preacher? There too the honey tongued tenor of Garranard–but we will draw a veil over the painful scene.

There is a certain symmetry of design in your list of books, a curiosa felicitas, a chaste eloquence and sombre pathos in the comments, ‘See no. 40’ and ‘see no. 2’ which I cannot but admire. I don’t know how they have bungled it, but so long as I actually have two copies of the ‘Helena’ it will be all right, as Mullen’s will make no difficulty about exchanging the unused one. If however the second copy exist (not exists) only on paper–why there we have the sombre pathos.

I am rather surprised at your criticism on ‘The Spirit of man’, and consider the reference to ‘rescuing’ both otiose and in doubtful taste. Of course it must be read, not merely as an anthology, but in the light of its title and avowed purpose, and we must not be disappointed when we find certain favourites left out because they could not rightly claim a place in such a scheme. In this sense indeed the book is rather an original work than a collection of poems: for just as the musician may weave together a symphony by using the melodies of others arranged to express himself, so I take it Bridges is here working out an idea of his own: and the medium he chooses–as one might choose marble and another chalk (which you know is deteriorating terribly)–is the collective poetry of his predecessors. Or indeed, if I am reading too much into him, this would be a plan for a better anthology than has yet been written. One thing in the book I admit is indefensible–the detestable translation from Homer, which, though you may hardly recognise it, is meant to be in the metre of ‘Oh! let us try’. For this Bridges ought to get ‘something with boiling oil’.

(#ulink_e1c88f83-6976-5a98-8392-096e50946a36)

After a January so warm and mild that one could almost have sat in the garden, we have suddenly been whisked back to winter. It has snowed all day today, and is freezing hard tonight on top of it. I am very sorry to hear what you tell me about Hope: as you say, it must be terribly lonely and trying for her out there, and I am afraid the patient brings a very second rate constitution to the struggle.

your loving son,

Jack

P.S. I forgot to say the list of books, with one exception, is correct. J.

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

[Gastons

28 February 1916]

Monday

My dear Galahad,

I suppose that by this time there is wrath and fury against me: however, there is no excuse, and you must just thole, as they say.

I don’t know what it is like with you, but for this last week we have had the most lovely snow here. There is no wind, so where the snow ‘falleth, there shall it lie’:

(#ulink_9a2ef381-3cad-577c-8a8e-b259f0a6dca0) which means that when you walk through the woods every branch is laden like a Christmas tree, and the mass of white arranged in every fantastic shape and grouping on the trees is really wonderful. Don’t you love to walk while it is actually snowing? I love to feel the soft, little touches on your face and see the country through a sort of haze: it is so exquisitly desolate. It reminds one of that scene in ‘The Lore of Proserpine’.

Poor thing! I do like the way, because a fellow asks you to join a corps, that you complain about ‘your troubles’. May you never do worse! It reminds me of the story of Wellesly and his rich friend: W. had been going on one of his preaching tours round the country, riding alone in all weather, being put in the stocks, insulted, & stoned by the mob, in the course of all which he stayed for a night at the luxurious mansion of the friend. During the evening, a puff of smoke blew out of the grate, whereupon the host exclaimed ‘You see, Sir, these are some of the crosses which I have to bear!’

(#ulink_28464da9-6fc9-57b9-85ea-c39efc7ebed2) Indeed, however, I ‘can’t talk’ as you would say, for of course I am an inveterate grumbler myself–as you, of all people have best reason to know.

By the way, do you know a series of rather commonplace little volumes at 1/6 each called the Walter Scott Library? I have just run across them: they are not particularly nice–though tolerable–but the point is that they sell some things I have often wanted to get: among others Morris’ translation of the ‘Volsunga Saga’ (not the poem, you know, that I have, but a translation of the old Icelandic prose saga) which cannot be got in any other edition except the twelve guinea ‘Works’, of which you can’t get the volumes separately.

(#ulink_779a9a6c-b6a7-588a-9783-22e8ce55066c) If only the edition were a little decenter I’d certainly get it.

Perhaps you laugh at my everlasting talk about buying books which I never really get: the real reason is that I have so little time here–indeed only the week-ends as I spend all the spare time on week-days in reading French books, which I want to get more fluent in. However, I am now nearing the end of the ‘Faerie Queene’, and when that is done the Saturdays & Sundays will be free for something else. Really, whatever you say, you have much more time than I.

I wonder why Osborne’s have sent no bill to me yet? I am not sure whether I asked you to give them my adress and tell them to send in the account or not: anyway, be a sport, and do so–AT ONCE. I have had a grisly dissapointment this week: Mrs K. said she was going away for a fortnight & I was gloating in the prospect of privacy & peace. But it has turned out a mare’s nest. Ochone!

be good,

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (LP V: 58-9):

[Gastons

7 March 1916]

Tuesday

My dear Galahad,

I was very glad to get your interesting letter–which was fortunately longer than some of them–as I was beginning to wonder what had become of you; I think your ‘lapse’ this term puts you on a level with mine last, so that we can cry quits and admit that we are both sinners.

I have had a great literary experience this week. I have discovered yet another author to add to our circle–our very own set: never since I first read ‘The well at the world’s end’ have I enjoyed a book so much–and indeed I think my new ‘find’ is quite as good as Malory or Morris himself. The book, to get to the point, is George Macdonald’s ‘Faerie Romance’, Phantastes,

(#ulink_65d88d8b-fde5-59d8-92b9-ce3ab3f0020d) which I picked up by hazard in a rather tired Everyman copy–by the way isn’t it funny, they cost 1/1d. now–on our station bookstall last Saturday. Have you read it? I suppose not, as if you had, you could not have helped telling me about it. At any rate, whatever the book you are reading now, you simply MUST get this at once: and it is quite worth getting in a superior Everyman binding too.

Of course it is hopeless for me to try and describe it, but when you have followed the hero Anodos along that little stream to the faery wood, have heard about the terrible ash tree and how the shadow of his gnarled, knotted hand falls upon the book the hero is reading, when you have read about the faery palace–just like that picture in the Dulac book–and heard the episode of Cosmo, I know that you will quite agree with me. You must not be disappointed at the first chapter which is rather conventional faery tale style, and after it you won’t be able to stop until you have finished. There are one or two poems in the tale–as in the Morris tales you know–which, with one or two exceptions are shockingly bad, so don’t TRY to appreciate them: it is just a sign, isn’t it, of how some geniuses can’t work in metrical forms–another example being the Brontes.

I quite agree with what you say about buying books, and love all the planning and scheming beforehand, and if they come by post, finding the neat little parcel waiting for you on the hall table and rushing upstairs to open it in the privacy of your own room. Some people–my father for instance–laugh at us for being so serious over our pleasures, but I think a thing can’t be properly enjoyed unless you take it in earnest, don’t you? What I can’t understand about you though is how you can get a nice new book and still go on stolidly with the one you are at: I always like to be able to start the new one on the day I get it, and for that reason wait to buy it until the old one is done But then of course you have so much more money to throw about than I.

Talking about finishing books, I have at last come to the end of the Faerie Queene: and though I say ‘at last’, I almost wish he had lived to write six books more as he hoped to do–so much have I enjoyed it. The two cantos of ‘Mutabilitie’ with which it ends are perhaps the finest thing in it, and if you have not done so already, you should read them whenever you have the time to spare.

I am now–by the same post–writing for a book called ‘British Ballads’ (Everyman)