Collected Letters Volume One: Family Letters 1905–1931

As we have seen, for some time now letters had been passing between father and son, and father and Mr Kirkpatrick, regarding Jack’s future. All were agreed that he should try for a place at Oxford, and Jack was due to sit for a scholarship examination there on 5 December. However, with one son already in the army, and the war growing worse every day, Albert Lewis was very anxious to keep Jack out of the service. According to the Military Service Act ‘every male British subject who had attained the age of eighteen and ordinarily resident in Great Britain was liable for enlistment in the army. On the other hand, the exemption mentioned at the beginning of this chapter–that of a man resident in Great Britain ‘for the purposes of his education only’ was now in effect. Jack was Irish, and the exemption applied to him. But contrary to his fathers wishes, Jack insisted that he would not apply for the exemption, and he was determined not to be talked out of it by either father or tutor.

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (LP V: 103-5):

[Gastons

4 July 1916]

My dear Arthur,

So you feel hurt that I should think you worth talking to only about books, music, etc.: in other words that I keep my friendship with you only for the highest plane of life: that I leave to others all the sordid and uninteresting worries about so-called practical life, and share with you those joys and experiences which make that life desirable: that–but now I am getting rhetorical. It must be the influence of dear Sidney and his euphuism I suppose. But seriously, what can you have been thinking about when you said ‘only’ books, music, etc., just as if these weren’t the real things!

However, if I had thought for a moment that it would interest you, of course you are perfectly welcome to a full knowledge of my plans–such as they are. Indeed I imagined that you had a pretty clear idea about them: well, ‘let us go forward’, to quote from a certain romance: being Irish, I hear from my father that the fact of my being educated in England will not bring me under the new act. I am therefore going to remain as I am until December when my Oxford exam comes off. After that, I shall of course join the army: but in what exact way, I don’t at present know any more than you do. So there you have the whole yarn.

I may just remark in passing that you should by this time know better than to waste pity on your friend Chubs for ‘worrying’ about it: did you ever see him worrying about anything? I have learnt by now that whatever plans you make in this world, everything always turns out quite differently, so what is the use of bothering? To be honest, the question has hardly crossed my mind once this term. Now I don’t mind in the least telling you all this, and if you wanted to know I don’t see why you never asked before. But then I am a coarse-grained creature who never could follow the feelings of refined–might I say super-refined?–natures like my Galahad’s.

The annoying part is that you have taken up your letter (and here am I taking up mine!!) with this, to the exclusion of all sorts of interesting things that I wanted to hear: for instance, you must tell me more about Hardy. We have all heard of him till we are sick of it, and so I should like to hear the opinion of someone I know. What sort of a novel is it? Would I like it?

But of course the first thing I looked for in this evening’s letter was to see if there was an instalment there. I have now read it over again with last week’s to get the continuous narrative, and with the same pleasure. Did you quite realise what a splendid touch it was for Dennis to hope ‘nobody would steal his clothes’? Somehow the practical, commonsense realism of that, increases the fairy-like effect of what follows enormously. I don’t know if I can explain it, but it sort of brings the thing just enough in touch with reality to make it convincing, without spoiling its dreaminess. Also the idea of his seeing her face not directly, but in the water, is somehow very romantic. By the way, I hope you don’t really think that I hinted for a moment that your willow was borrowed from my roses: how could you know what my roses were going to do about five chapters ahead? Above all, don’t change anything in the plan of your tale on that account. Perhaps, as you say, we both took it unconsciously from ‘Phantastes’, who in his turn borrowed it from the dryads, etc. of classical mythology, who are a development of the primitive savage idea that everything has a spirit (just as your precious Jehovah is an old Hebrew thunder spirit): so we needn’t be ashamed of borrowing our trees, since they are really common property.

Your reply to my criticism is typically Galahadian: but though in your case I am sure it is more sincere than it looks, still this excessive modesty is rather absurd. You may be dissatisfied with it (though I don’t see why), you may be uncertain of yourself, but still in your heart of hearts you don’t think of ‘The Water Sprite’ as ‘that rubbish of mine’, now do you?

Do you know what your tale has done? It has made me sorry that I began Bleheris in the old style: I see now that though it is harder to work some effects in modern English, yet on the whole my way of writing is a sort of jargon: however, we must do the best we can. I was very glad to hear that you liked the Sunken Wood, especially as the next two chapters are stodgy conversation. I am afraid Bleheris never gets into the wood: but you ought to know that the ‘little, hobbling shadow’ doesn’t live more in that wood than anywhere else. It follows nervous children upstairs to bed, when they daren’t look over their shoulders, and comes and sits on your grandfather’s summer seat beside two friends when they have talked too much nonsense in the dark. I hope you have an illustration ready for this chapter?

I am still at the ‘Arcadia’, which you will gather from this is a long book, though not a bit too long. I won’t make you sick of it before you see it by starting to sing its praises again: I only promise you that I am still as keen on it as when I began. By the way, now that we are both writing, and know how much work there is in a short instalment that can be read in a few minutes, you begin to realize the labour of writing a thing say like the ‘Morte D’Arthur’.

I gather from your silence that you are doing nothing in the gramophone way? Ask the Girlinosbornes whether my new record of ‘Is not His word like a fire’

(#ulink_7d5c8247-13cb-5a4f-a532-df26c37bd430) (ordered last holidays) has come yet or not. I hope it will be waiting for me when I get home: which event–do you realize–will happen in about a month. This term has gone terribly quickly and been very pleasant, but all the same I shall not be sorry to take up my other life again.

What new books are there of yours to see? I am longing to have a look at your De Quincey and ‘Rossetti’. By the way, I suppose you never looked up the passage about the ‘bore’ nor the one in William Morris about Hylas and the nymphs? I have now finished my Tristan, which is really delightful: it is the saddest story on earth I think, don’t you? I have written for the French Everyman translation of ‘Roland’ which ought to have come by now, but hasn’t. I am interested to see what the binding is like, aren’t you?

You will see by the scrawl that I am trying to write about a million miles an hour as everyone has gone to bed. So goodnight old man: send another instalment next week, I am so interested in your adorable fairy.

Yrs.,

Jack

P.S. By the way, one criticism just to keep you from getting your head turned. Don’t talk about Dennis as ‘our young friend’ or ‘our hero’–the last is like a newspaper: at least you may take it as a suggestion just for what it is worth.–J.

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 102-3):

[Gastons

7 July 1916]

My dear Papy,

Your ‘essay’ and letter arrived, and Kirk read me a great part of the former. I think what you say about Christ Church is probably right, although Kirk tells me that there is most certainly a reading set, which one could live in. However, Dod[d]s specially recommends New, and as you say yourself, both it and Oriel are in the first rank. On the other hand, I am afraid that there will be no more ‘Guards Regiments’ anywhere by the time I reach Oxford: the old ‘bloods’ have mostly been shot, and the atmosphere of an after-war England will not be conductive to the birth of a new generation. Fortunately, there is no hurry about the question, and we can talk it over together in comfort next holidays.

Yes! It would be true irony if we ran upon something of the James or Capron type again; our little portrait gallery for that never-written novel is already getting crowded. By the way, what do you think of the new arrangement about Ulster? Kirk has talked about it for nearly a week: not that he has any views on either side, but he seems to find a pleasure in balancing off all the arguments for and against the proposal: so well has he succeeded that I am beginning to think ‘That way lies madness.’

(#ulink_c26a99dd-ca10-5b01-a41f-da7e71c81be4) No sooner have we made up our minds on one side, than we are immediately floored by a new point that he brings up on the other. What do you think about it?

I must deprecate those very questionable references to my unfortunate last term’s exodus from Gastons: if I saw that the goodwife of the house was, like Martha ‘careful over many things,’

(#ulink_79754f9d-fc5f-5e0d-98a4-6e3c258e86a2) and then tactfully suggested that I might go home, what do you find extraordinary in such an action? At any rate, though we have our faults, we don’t make ourselves ridiculous in an open carriage, nor lose our way in a country we have known from childhood. To be sensible, I suppose the term will end, as you say, at the end of July.

Many thanks for both your enclosures. The letter was from my old Malvern study companion Hardman: he is going to be conscripted at Christmas, and wants to know what I am going to do. I am writing to say that I don’t know yet, but will tell him as soon as our plans are settled. Of course if it turned out to be convenient, I should like to have a friend with me in the army, but it is hardly worth while making any special provisions for so small a matter. We shall see how it all works out.

Your reference to the two books is tantalizing. I quite agree with you that they should be put in a safe place: and the safest place in Leeborough is a certain ‘little end room’ where all the footsteps point one way. I for my part am still at my ‘Arcadia’ which I find excellent.

The weather here is ridiculous: wintry colds alternating with hot, close fogs, and an occasional thunder shower. I don’t know what the farmers will do.

your loving

son Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (LP V: 106-8):

[Gastons

11 July 1916]

My dear Arthur,

I am very glad to hear that you are getting to like Jason: I agree with you that the whole description of Medea–glorious character–going out by night, and of her sorceries in the wood is absolutely wonderful, and there are other bits later on, such as the description of the ‘Winter by the Northern River’ and the garden of the Hesperides, which I think quite as good. Curiously enough I have just started the Argonautica’

(#ulink_8624a300-d9d7-51d2-a177-32fd058e6f59) the Greek poem on the same subject, and though I haven’t got very far–only in fact to the launching of Argo–it is shaping very well. It will be interesting to compare this version with Morris’s, although indeed the story of the Golden Fleece is so perfect in itself that it really can’t be spoiled in the telling. Don’t you find the very names Argo’ and ‘Argonauts’ somehow stirring?

I thought a person like you would sooner or later come to like poetry: by the way, of course you are quite right when you talk about thinking more of the matter than of the form. All I meant when I talked about the importance of form was to carry a little further what you already feel in prose–that is how some phrases such as the Wall of the World, or at the Back of the North Wind affect you, partly by sound partly by association, more than the same meaning would if otherwise expressed. The only difference is that poetry makes use of that sort of feeling much more than prose and produces those effects by metre as well as by phrase. In fact, the metre and the magic of the words should be like the orchestration of a Wagnerian opera–should sort of fill the matter by expressing things that can’t be directly told–that is, it expresses feeling while the matter expresses thought. But I daresay I have given you my views on the subject before. I am very flattered that you remember that old line about the ‘garden where the west wind’ all these months, and will certainly copy out anything that is worth it if you can find me a shop in dear Belfast where I can buy a decent MS book: I have failed in that endeavour so far.

So we are to be treated to more and more modesty? Indeed Arthur if I could get a little of your diffidence, and you a little of my conceit we should both be very fine fellows. This week’s instalment is quite worthy of the other two, and I was quite disappointed when it broke off. The reeds ‘frightened out of their senses’ and shouting in ‘their loudest whisper’ are delightful. ‘Our Lady of the Leaf might be kept in mind as a possible title if you don’t care for the present one.

You are rather naive in telling me that you ‘have to sit for a minute thinking’ and ‘find the same word coming in again’ as if these weren’t the common experiences of everyone who has ever written. I haven’t noticed any smallness in the vocabulary you employ for your tale, and anyway that’s just a matter of practice. By the way, even if you didn’t mean it, I hope you see now what I am driving at about the remark of Dennis as to his clothes. As to the ‘sitting for ten minutes’, I don’t believe that good work is ever done in a hurry: even if one does write quickly in a burst of good form, it always has to be tamed down afterwards. I usually make up my instalment in my head on a walk because I find that my imagination only works when I am exercising.

Can you guess what I have been reading this week? Of all things in the world ‘Pendennis’!

(#ulink_87d400d1-1294-5e70-b40a-2199b21dee95) Isn’t this the one you find too much for you? I am nearly through the first volume and like it well so far: of course one gets rather sick of Pen’s everlasting misbehaviour and the inevitable repentance going round and round like a mill wheel and there doesn’t seem much connection between one episode and another. All the same, it has a sort of way with it.

That feast the ‘Arcadia’ is nearly ended: in some ways the last book is the best (though a little spoiled I admit by brasting) and here the story is so like the part of Ivanhoe where they are all in Front-de-Boeuf’s castle, that I think Scott must have borrowed it.

(#ulink_cd787708-4c4e-5910-8b28-dff4cbc79742) Your remarks about C. Rosetti’s poems are very tantalizing and I am longing to see them. How I do love expensive books if only I could afford them. Apropos of which, do you know anything of the artist Beardesley?

(#ulink_d56cfd20-1895-5f68-9f26-a70446d083f6) I fancy he was the man who started the modern school of ‘queer’ illustrations and the like: well I see you can get for £1.5s. a 1 vol. edition of Malory with his illustrations, published by Dent. What do you think it would be like? I only wish it was Macmillan and so we could have it on approval.

You are quite wrong old man in saying I can draw ‘when I like’. On the contrary, if I ever can draw, it is exactly when I don’t like. If I sit down solemnly with the purpose of drawing, it is a sight to make me ‘ridiculous to the pedestrian population of the etc.’. The only decent things I do are scribbled in the margins of my dictionary–like Shirley–or the backs of old envelopes, when I ought to be attending to something else.

I am quite as sorry as you that I can’t see my way to working Bleheris back into the Sunken Wood, for I think the idea might be worked a bit more: but don’t see how it is to be done without changing the whole plan of the story.