Collected Letters Volume One: Family Letters 1905–1931

I have been reading the quaintest book this week, ‘The Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple’ in Everyman. I suppose, as a historian you will know all about those two, but in case you don’t they lived in Cromwell’s time. It is very interesting to read the ordinary everyday life of a girl in those days, and, tho’ of course they are often dull there is a lot in them you would like: especially a description of how she spends the day and another of a summer evening in the garden. It is funny too, to notice that, just like us, she says that she never wished very hard for anything in her life without being dissapointed. But then I suppose everyone in the world has said that sometime or other. It is perhaps not a book to read straight through but well worth having.

My other reading–in French–has been Maeterlinck’s ‘Oiseau Bleu’: of course I have read it before in English and seen it on the stage, as you know, but I am absolutely delighted to read it again. Now that I have the original I wish you would adopt my English version, which is yours forever for the taking whenever you care to walk up to my room at home and find it on the little open bookcase. You could do it to day when you are home for lunch: I don’t know why you have never read this glorious book before, but please do as I suggest & (though it is always dangerous, as we know, to recommend) I think you will have some real joy out of it. The scenes in the Temple of Night and in the Kingdom of the Future are exactly in our line.

Unfortunately we have not got a complete set of Scott here–only odd Everyman copies of which ‘The Fair Maid of Perth’ is not one. The earlier period is of course all the better for me, in fact to be honest I am childish enough to like ‘Ivanhoe’ better than any of his, and next to it ‘Quentin Durward’. What is ‘Guy Mannering’ like? The alternative title of ‘The Astrologer’ sounds attractive but of course it may not have much to do with it.

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How’s the poor, miserable, ill-fated, star-crossed, hapless, lonely, neglected, misunderstood puppy getting along? What are you going to call him, or rather, to speak properly, how hight he? Don’t give him any commonplace name, and above all let it suit his character & appearance. Something like Sigurd, Pelleas or Mars if he is brisk and warlike, or Mime, Bickernocker or Knutt if he is ugly and quaint. Or perhaps he is dead by now, poor little devil!

The book you refer to is ‘How to Form a Literary Taste’ by Arnold Benett:

(#litres_trial_promo) the edition is pretty but the book is not of any value. The very title–as if you set out to ‘learn’ literature the way you learn golf–shews that the author is not a real book-lover but only a priggish hack. I never read any of his novels & don’t want to. Have you? By the way, he is a rather violent atheist, so I suppose I shall meet him by

‘The fiery, flaming flood of Phlegethon’,

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as good old Spencer has it. I am sure Lockhart’s Life of Scott would be good, but 5 vols. at 3/6 each is too much: at any rate I had sooner get Boswell if I were going to make a start on biography. I have read to day–there’s absolutely no head or tale in this letter but you ought to be used to that by now–some 10 pages of Tristam Shandy’

(#litres_trial_promo) and am wondering whether I like it. It is certainly the maddest book ever written or ‘ever wrote’ as dear Dorothy Osborne would say. It gives you the impression of an escaped lunatic’s conversation while chasing his hat on a windy May morning. Yet there are beautiful serious parts in it though of a sentimental kind, as I know from my father. Have you ever come across it?

Tang-Tang there goes eleven o’clock ‘Tis almost faery time’.

(#litres_trial_promo) Don’t you simply love going to bed. To curl up warmly in a nice warm bed, in the lovely darkness, that is so restful & then gradually drift away into sleep…Perhaps to enjoy this properly you must stay up till 11 working fairly hard at something–even a letter like this–so as to be really hungry for sleep. At home, like you, I often get started off on a train of thought which keeps me awake: here I am always too tired tho’ goodness knows, eleven is early enough compared with some peoples times. It is strange, somehow, to read about concerts & Bill Patterson’s visits etc; when I am at Bookham everything at home seems a little unreal. Each of you (i.e. my friends) is quite real by him or herself but ‘en bloc’ you seem like something out of a book. I wish I had been with you at D. Garrick.

(#litres_trial_promo) I have always heard it was good. I shall not soon forget that morning at the far end of the strand, with the pleasant ‘Frightfulness’ of the Waves. I can still remember exactly what it felt like in the water and also running up to the cave. Take it all in all, we’ve had many pleasant times in our lives, & of these many (in my case) the most part together. You’d think I was bidding you an eternal farewell the way I’m going on. There’s quarter past, so I’ll say ‘Good morning’ not ‘Night’ for you read this at breakfast, don’t you? I’m turning out the gas. Bon soir!

Jack

By the way, what sort of voice has a ‘cracked turnip’. See your last letter.

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 134-5):

[Gastons]

27/Oct./16.

My dear Papy,

Far be it from me to plead in extenuation of the disgusting freak of Algy that it was only fun. The debauches of a ruffian are not the less disgraceful because they are the product of levity, and Nero is said to have fiddled–about which I have my own views–on a famous occasion. As a matter of fact, to be serious, if Elia’s theory that ‘the best puns are the worst’

(#litres_trial_promo) is true also of Limericks, Swinburne’s Majorca one is a masterpiece, and so is the next one about Birmingham–though on the whole I would agree with you in preferring the ‘deserted garden’.

I was very sorry to hear of the death of ‘A Student in arms’, whose book I read last holidays as you may remember.

(#litres_trial_promo) I never met anything exactly like it before, it is wonderfully original and beautiful. Nothing in it however, if I remember aright, quite reaches the level of this last article, a wise and charming piece of work–and doubly so from the exquisite appropriateness with which it comes from the pen of a man who died a few days after writing it. As you say, there is almost something divine about the way in which he sums up his beliefs and his views on death, just as though he knew the end was coming and meant to finish off his work. The substance of this paper resembles Bernard Shaw’s cry, ‘Why not give Christianity a trial?’–so far at least as the writing of a scholar and a gentleman can resemble that of a Philistine. Indeed nowadays there seems to be a tendency in that direction: there is some possibility of getting back it appears, to what Christ actually did teach, and clearing away all the additions His followers have been tacking on for the last twenty centuries.

Before leaving the subject of Student in Arms’, I must draw your attention to what seems a mis-print in the sentence marked. Surely the full stop should come after ‘discouraged’, and not after ‘offend’. The author first states a general principle Anxious responsibility is discouraged’, and then goes on to quote as an example of this, the fact that ‘if our limbs offend etc.’. As it stands, the sense is not so clear.

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I am glad that all these ‘manifestations’ of Boas prove to emanate from the same ‘quella’ as editors of MSS. say: perhaps some day, he might be of use to us. Congratulate Dick from me on his decoration and Joey on his scholarship–as to which we can only pray ‘adsit omen.’

That is rather a fine article on Hackluyt in this weeks Literary Supplement

(#litres_trial_promo) and a good deal of it might stand as an apology–in the Newman sense of course–for my hours spent on poor Mandeville. The quotation about the deer coming down to the water ‘as we rowed’

(#litres_trial_promo) is particularly attractive.

How goes the picture? Even if Mr. Baker

(#litres_trial_promo) is not the society you would choose, still even a compulsory companion (that’s a pretty sounding mouthful) to swallow up some part of your solitary week ends is a good thing. Indeed logically, the more disagreeable the companion the more he ought to reconcile you to subsequent loneliness.

your loving

son Jack.

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

[Gastons

1 November 1916]

My dear Galahad,

I can’t let it pass unchallegend that you should put ‘Boewulf’ and ‘Malory’ together as if they belonged to the same class. One is a mediaeval, English prose romance and the other an Anglo Saxon epic poem: one is Christian, the other heathen: one we read just as it was actually written, the other in a translation. So you can like one without the other, and any way you must like or dislike them both for different reasons. It is always very difficult of course to explain to another person the good points of a book he doesn’t like. I know what you mean by that ‘crampy’ feeling: you mean there are no descriptions in Beowulf as in a modern book, so little is told you & you have to imagine so much for yourself.

Well, for one thing, remember that nearly all your reading is confined to about 150 years of one particular country: this is no disgrace to you, most people’s circle is far smaller. But still, compared with the world this one little period of English literature is very small, and tho’ you (and I of course) are so accustomed to the particular kinds of art we find inside it, yet we must remember that there are an infinite variety outside it, quite as good in different ways. And so, if you suddenly go back to an Anglo-Saxon gleeman’s lay, you come up against something absolutely different–a different world. If you are to enjoy it, you must forget your previous ideas of what a book should be and try and put yourself back in the position of the people for whom it was first made. When I was reading it I tried to imagine myself as an old Saxon thane sitting in my hall of a winter’s night, with the wolves & storm outside and the old fellow singing his story. In this way you get the atmosphere of terror that runs through it–the horror of the old barbarous days when the land was all forests and when you thought that a demon might come to your house any night & carry you off. The description of Grendel stalking up from his ‘fen and fastness’ thrilled me. Besides, I loved the simplicity of the old life it represents: it comes as a relief to get away from all complications about characters & ‘problems’ to a time when hunting, fighting, eating, drinking & loving were all a man had to think of it. And lastly, always remember it’s a translation which spoils most things.

As to ‘Malory’ I liked it so awfully this time–far better than before–that I don’t know what to say. How can I explain? For one thing, to me it is a world of its own, like Jane Austen. Though impossible, it is very fully realized, and all the characters are old friends, we know them so well: you get right away in those forests and somehow to me all the adventures & meetings & dragons seem very real. (I don’t beleive that last sentence conveys my meaning a bit) Then too I find in it a rest as you do in Scott: he (M. I mean) is so quiet after our modern writers & thinks of his ‘art’ so little: he is not self-conscious. Of course he doesn’t describe as Morris does, but then he doesn’t need to: in the ‘Well’ you feel it is only a tale suddenly invented and therefore everything has to be described. But the Round Table is different: it was a hundred years ago & shall be a hundred years hence. It wasn’t just made up like an ordinary tale, it grew. Malory seems to me almost a historian: his world is real to me, his characters are old friends whom you get to know better & better as you go on–he is a companiabl author & good when you’re lonely.

I suppose this sounds all rot? But after all when you say it ‘doesn’t suit you’ you strike at the root of the matter. Perhaps you can’t enjoy it just as I couldn’t enjoy Green’s Short History:

(#litres_trial_promo) it is not my fault that I don’t like oysters but no reasoning will make me like them. This controversy has proved even more expansive than the other: if you had given me any excuse for going on with the ‘exaltation’ one I’m afraid I should never get to bed to-night. By the way I suppose at 10 o’clock when I am beginning your letter you are just getting into bed? Remember at 10 next Wednesday night to imagine me just spreading out your one in front of me and starting to jaw. But seriously, do I bore you. I have taken up such reams about ‘Boewulf etc. It is easy to explain a thought, but to explain a feeling is very hard.

Last week-end I spent in reading ‘The Professor’. It forms a nice sort of suppliment to Villette–something [like] the same story told from the man’s side. I liked the description of Hunsden extremely & also the detestable brother. I do wish she had left out the awful poetry in the proposal scene: they are the worst verses in the language I should think. Its difficult to understand how a woman of Ch. Brontës genius could help seeing how bad they were. But on the whole it is a very enjoyable book, tho’ not of course to be compared with her other three. What did you think of it?

Yes, I shall be home for Xmas, rather earlier in fact. This exam.

(#litres_trial_promo) will take place in the first week of December and when it is over I shall come straight home. I am beginning to funk it rather: I wish you were in for it with me (so as to be sure of one, at least, worse than myself). I wish I could see ‘The Winter’s Tale’: it, ‘The Midsummer’s Nights Dream’ & the Tempest are the only things of Shakespeare I really appreciate, except the Sonnets.

(#litres_trial_promo) It is a very sweet, sort of old fairy-tale style of thing. You must certainly see it. As to Bennet’s book, if a person was really a book-lover, however ignorant, he wouldn’t go and look up a text book to see what to buy, as if literature was a subject to be learned like algebra: one thing would lead him to another & he would go through the usual mistakes & gain experience. I hate this idea of ‘forming a taste’. If anyone like the feuilletons in the ‘Sketch’ better than Spenser, for Heaven’s sake let him read them: anything is better than to read things he doesn’t really like because they are thought classical. I say, old man, it’s beastly kind of you to keep the ‘Country of the Blind’ till I come. Of course if you hadn’t told me I should have thought you would throw it off the top of the tram. Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha, likewise He-He-He! (You do love that sort of writing!) By the way why do you call it your dog if it lives at Glenmachen? I suppose in the same way as you like Shakespeare but I don’t like reading him? Can’t write more to night, your last letter was very short–

J.

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 142):

[Gastons]