Collected Letters Volume One: Family Letters 1905–1931

The immediate prospects of my getting married ‘agreeably or otherwise’ as you kindly suggest, are not very numerous: but if you are getting uneasy about an invitation, rest assured, when the event comes off, if you behave you shall have one.

It was strange that Mrs K. should get Hardy’s ‘Under the Greenwood Tree’

(#ulink_dc6ebc1a-87cd-5489-ac79-0b2c09cdb044) out of the library last week, though I never got a chance of looking into it: somehow I don’t fancy Hardy is in my line, but then I always have a prejudice against people whom you’re always hearing about.

You say nothing about music now-a-days, and I am afraid I scarcely think of it: it annoys me hugely to think of the whole world of pleasures that I used to have and can’t enjoy now. Did you see a long article in the Times Literary Supplement

(#ulink_95f052ff-fbe3-5f5a-bd03-88f2c56b3942) about the ‘Magic Flute’

(#ulink_0cfc15de-47ee-5f63-8716-af22cc2adeea) which is on at the Shaftesbury? How I wish I could go up and hear it and also ‘Tristan and Isolde’

(#ulink_ae22d3dd-5ddc-56b3-b75d-b86b278764df)–though if I did it would be a disappointment in all probability.

I am furious because in answer to my order for the ‘Chanson de Roland’ I am told it is out of print, which is very tiresome. Here I enclose another chapter, really all conversation this time, but can promise you a move next week. Don’t forget your own instalment which I look forward to very eagerly. Good night.

Yours,

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 105-6):

[Gastons

14? July 1916]

My dear Papy,

This must be nipped in the bud: there can be no question of that. Get your lady friend’s visit over before the end of this month, at all costs, or else bid them avaunt till the winter.

(#ulink_c5db6607-60e5-5319-9579-f0e8c5d0d3b3) What should I do, left alone all day to face a situation of that sort? As well, the whole thing is tyranny, extortion, infliction, profligacy and arrogance of the worst sort, and therefore not to be borne. Have they not already taken more than their fair share of reprisals for our own visit so long ago? This ‘breakfast is a charming meal’ business can be overdone: however, a man can but die once, so I suppose destiny must take its course.

This is big news from the front, though whether it will have any permanent effect or not, of course we can’t say. The Ulster Division–what there are of them now–must have silenced the yapping politicians for ever.

(#ulink_dcf3d507-f3da-5d2c-9afc-65aa69bb47aa) I suppose the losses are felt very heavily in Belfast: here, nobody seems to have noticed anything.

Yes, that wheeze about ‘pulled through’ ought to ‘supply a long felt want’: it can be used on every occasion and ought to live for a very long time. I am sorry if any obscurity on my part gave rise to the ‘savage emphasis,’ but then his ordinary style of conversation is so–I think the word is ‘nervous’ in its 18th Century sense, that best describes it–that we must not pay too much attention to such things. I think, as you say, that things point to New, but of course we will keep an open mind in the meantime.

The literary event of the week is our respected laureate’s ode in the Times Literary Supplement:

(#ulink_fb6388d0-84f4-5463-bf78-afd53965f357) truly a most remarkable production, though I am afraid like the honest Major in ‘Patience,’ I must confess that ‘it seems to me nonsense’.

(#ulink_dde69896-e83e-508c-b963-acc13eae7b69) To do the man justice, the lines about Homer, the ones about the birds, the beginning of the vision, and a few other passages, are rather fine. But the habit of throwing in an odd rhyme here and there is rather uncomfortable: still, if you can lay your hand upon it (the Pattersonian pun is quite a mistake, owing to haste, as it is getting late and the others are going up) you might keep this number.

I am at present in the middle of a book called ‘Pendennis’ which I should advise you to read unless I knew your prejudice against the author: however, one of these days you will come round and ‘see my point.’

your loving,

son,

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (LP V: 111-13):

[Gastons]

Tuesday evening, the I

don’t know whath,

18] July /16.

My dear Arthur,

I can’t understand why you should want to know the dates on which these gems of wit were written: if you should ever happen to look at them in the future, a date is a meaningless thing and it won’t really help you to see a few numbers written on the top. For my part, when I read your old letters, I don’t think about such nonsense. I classify them not by time but by the stage in our thoughts at which they were written: I say ‘Ah, that was when we were talking about Loki, this was when we talked much about music and little about books, we didn’t know each other so well when this was written’ and so on. Which is far more sensible than saying, ‘This was September 1914, that was August 1915.’ As well, the fact that everyone else puts a date on their letters is to me an excellent reason for not doing so. Still, if you are really concerned about it, I suppose I must ‘bow myself in the house of Rimmon’.

(#ulink_f05f892d-4960-52d9-9b6e-242bed4545af) Since I have gone so far as to put a date however, you can’t be so unreasonable as to suggest that it should be the right one.

I am awfully bucked about ‘Twelfth Night’:

(#ulink_8864efc5-73cc-5fda-87e5-26ac9de34722) I thought at the time you remember, that Heath Robinson’s illustrations were absolutely perfect–quite as good as Rackham’s, though of course in a different style. If I remember aright there is a splendid one on the line ‘How full of shapes is fancy’

(#ulink_5e57233a-4a0e-5ce7-8224-cbab4ce29cc9) and also some fine evening cloud effects–not to mention the jester in the rain and the delightfully ‘old English’ garden scenes.

I am longing, as you say, to be at home and to go over all our treasures both old and new:–so of course we shall be disappointed in some way. As you say, you are extravagant, but I too at present buy one book as soon as I have finished another.

The Arcadia’ is finished: or rather I have read all there is of it, for unfortunately it breaks off at a most exciting passage in the middle of a sentence. I will not praise it again, beyond saying that this last 3rd. book, though it has no such fine love passages as the 2nd., yet (despite the brasting), for really tip-top narrative working the interest up and up as it goes along, is quite worthy of Scott.

This week’s new purchase consisted of Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’–in the same edition as my Mandeville

(#ulink_bd6e2038-8bf3-55f0-9370-0e4f8ba25cdb)–and ‘John Silence’ in the 7d. edition. Just as one sometimes has a spell of being disappointed in new books, so at other times you keep on getting one treat after another. For the first few pages of John Silence I was hardly in the right mood: but after that it fairly swept me off my feet, so that on Saturday night I hardly dared to go upstairs. I left off-until next week end–in the middle of the ‘Nemesis of Fire’–Oh, Arthur, aren’t they priceless? Particularly the ‘Ancient Sorceries’ one, which I think I shall remember all my life. Oh, that evil dance, and the ‘muttering the old, old incantation’! The feeling of it all chimed with a lovely bit of ‘Paradise Lost’ which I read the same evening where it talked of the hounds that,

’…Follow the night hag, when, called In secret riding through the air she comes Lured with the smell of infant blood, to dance With Leopard witches, while the labouring moon Eclipses at their charms.’

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Don’t you like the Leopard witches? How you will love Milton some day! By the way we may remark in passing that John Silence is one of the nicest 7d’s in paper and so forth that I have ever seen. I wonder how people would laugh if they could hear us smacking our lips over our 7d’s and Everymans just as others gloat over rare folios and an Editio Princeps? But after all, we are surely right to get all the pleasure we can, and even in the cheapest books there is a difference between coarse and nice get up. I wonder what a book called ‘Letters from Hell’ published at 1/-by Macmillan would be like?’

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This week’s instalment I enjoyed especially: the idea of the hair so beautiful to the eye so coarse to the touch is very suggestive, and you keep us in fine doubt as to whether your faery is going to turn out good and benevolent or terrible. You complain that your tale is commonplace, but I don’t know anything that you think is like it, and I hope that you will really never think of giving it up unfinished–all the same, if you do–for which I can see no earthly reason–don’t be discouraged, because we very rarely succeed in finishing a first work. If you saw the number of ‘beginnings’ I have made! By the by, there is one little point I must grouse at this week. You say that the faery resumed her ‘normal’ size. What was her normal size? We saw her first as a little figure on a leaf, and she hasn’t changed since. Do you mean that she took on human size? Of course a few trifling changes when you revise will make this quite clear. The point of names is rather difficult: ‘Dennis’ I like, but the old Irish attractions of ‘Desmond’ are very strong. I really don’t know what I should advise.

I am sorry you disapprove of my remarks in the romance. But you must remember that it is not Christianity itself I am sneering at, but Christianity as taught by a formal old priest like Ulfin, and accepted by a rather priggish young man like Bleheris.

(#litres_trial_promo) Still, I fear you will like the main gist of the story even less when you grasp it–if you ever do, for as is proper in romance, the inner meaning is carefully hidden.

I am really very sorry to hear about your new record, but so many of your Odeons have been successful that I cannot reasonably have the pleasure of saying ‘I told you so’. Talking about music, I have at last found out the exact number of the Chopin piece I like so well–it is the 21st Prelude. Look it out, and tell me if it is not the best music in the world?

I am afraid it is mere foolishness to praise that rhyme of mine as you do. Remember, you know exactly the occasion that gave rise to it, and can read between the lines, while to others it would perhaps be scarcely intelligible: still it is nice to be able to please even one reader–as you do too, for all your talk. In a way that sort of double-meaning in the title ‘Lady of the Leaf would be rather fascinating I think.