Collected Letters Volume One: Family Letters 1905–1931

I am afraid P. will be in a very cheerless mood for the hols. If we cannot have mental enjoyment from the atmosphere of Leeborough

(#ulink_c58e7525-25df-5cdb-bf0f-b19c20458229) we can always fall back on our own resources and make the most of the physical comfort which, at their worst, the holidays always afford. Rows after tea and penitentiary strolls in the garden are not pleasant: but a soft bed, a nice Abdullah, a lazy walk with Tim, an occasional Hippodrome or Opera House, have their consolation and a sound gramophone can always refresh the jaded ear. But even now, in a rather dark hour, I do not dispair of P’s cheering up a bit for the hols; for, as good luck would have it, my scholarship has brightened things.

Please write soon (how often have I made that request and received no answer to it), and tell me exactly what has happened, and also tell me your arrangements for the journey home. We break up on Tuesday 29th July, and you as I understand, the following Wednesday. So I suppose we shall go on the Tuesday. Do write immediately and tell me about this matter. Don’t spend all your journey money. Cheer up.

your affect.

brother Jack.

P.S. Send a cab up for me first, and then down to S.H., and let it be in plenty of time. J.

In a letter to his father of 12 December 1912, Warnie told his father that, while he knew smoking was against the rules at Malvern College, he would like his permission to smoke ‘in moderation elsewhere (LP III: 317). Mr Lewis replied on 14 December, ‘School smoking I condemn unreservedly…But outside that–at dinners etc., where it would make you odd or uncomfortable not to smoke a cigarette– smoke it and smoke it with a clear conscience, knowing that you would not be ashamed to tell your father what you had done. But in school it is different’ (LP III: 318). No trouble seems to have come of this and Warnie was made a prefect on 9 March 1913. About this time he decided on a career in the army and, careless of College rules, he was involved in several escapades. In June 1913 he was degraded from the prefect-ship after being caught smoking at school. Warnie had hoped to remain at Malvern until Christmas 1913 so that he could be there for Jack’s first term, but while the headmaster, Canon S.R. James, was willing to reinstate him in his position as a prefect in July 1913 he would not allow him to remain another term. It was Warnie’s wish at this time to enter the Royal Military College at Sandhurst and pass from there into the Army Service Corps (ASC). For this Warnie would need to pass the entrance examination to Sandhurst and his father began considering how he might prepare for this.

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 44-5):

Cherbourg.

6/6/13 [6 July 1913]

My dear Papy,

I have been extremely worried since I got your last letter. No: I do not know what has happened to W. I have had no news either of him or from him since the day when I heard that he had been degraded. What has happened? Surely he has not been expelled? I often had fears as to what he might do at Malvern, but I never thought it would come to this. It is of no use my writing to him for information, as he seems to consider the answering of letters a superfluous occupation. Of course I know that all this is worse for you than for me, but it is very unpleasant for both of us: what has he himself got to say upon the matter? However, please let me know as soon as you can what the exact position of affairs is: in the meantime I can only hope that my fears have no foundation; for after all, the great majority of the troubles which I have at one time or another anticipated, have never come to pass. But after all, the process of self consolation, if it were not such a terrible business, would be almost funny. We are ready to turn and twist the facts until they bear no resemblance to the original thing. Perhaps one could not go on at all without doing so. Perhaps however if W’s school career has been a failure, he may do better in the future.

Thank you very, very much for your kind suggestion about the present. You are really making too much of this scholarship.

(#ulink_a846be4f-af6b-5199-a628-5385a40271d2) Nevertheless, there is nothing that I should prize more than a nice edition of Kipling, whose poems I am just beginning to read and to wonder why I never read them before–a usual state of mind, in the literary way, for me at Leeborough.

Today we leave our letters open and the authorities insert a printed notice of the date of breaking up. Its rather singular to notice the familiar landmarks–in a metaphorical sense–that cluster round as we reach the last weeks of the term–and there are only three more now. Nevertheless I hardly watch the flight of time with my usual eagerness. In spite of several rows both fierce and long drawn out, both with masters and boys, I have really been very happy at Cherbourg; and Malvern is unknown ground. More important than this is the fact that we shall see each other again in a short time.

Looking forward to which, I am,

your loving

son Jack.

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 45-6):

Cherbourg.

Gt. Malvern.

8/7/13.

My dear Papy,

I was more pleased than I can say to get your letter. Bad as the news is, it is not the worst, and it is always a relief to have certainty after a prolonged spell of suspense. I am afraid I cannot carry out your suggestion of letting W. speak first: shortly after I wrote my letter to you, I decided to write to him, partly because I hoped for an answer from the College which would naturally reach me before one from Belfast, and I could bear it no longer, partly to cheer W. up since no recriminations can improve the accomplished facts, and partly to settle arrangements about the journey home. In this letter I asked him of course, what exactly had happened, but I have received your answer. You are right in your supposition that I should resent being left in the dark, and I am very thankful that you wrote and told me everything.

Do not say in a letter that ‘you must stop, or else begin to pour out all your troubles, which would be unfair’. It would not be unfair; it would be wise. For, in the first place you would derive some comfort from the mere action of putting them into words, and, in the second place, I trust that they would be lighter after we had talked them over together in our letters. This small thing, this act of discussing and sympathizing over matters, is all the help I can give you at present, but, such as it is, I give it, as you know, very gladly.

Perhaps you will be somewhat cheered up by the visit of our Scotch relatives: but to be honest, I have spoken too fiercely and too often against society to endeavour now to preach in its favour.

I was very interested by what you told me about Jordan.

(#ulink_34188ad0-781b-5129-adde-ae2c1cb623de) Who knows but that I owe more to those early little essays in the old days than you or I imagine? For it is to this uneducated postman that I owe the fact that I was acquainted with the theory of essay writing, in however crude a form, at an age when most boys hardly know the meaning of the word. To him, of course, next to you and to the fact of my being born in a race rich in literary feeling and mastery of their own tongue, and in that atmosphere of culture which has always shrouded the study both at Dundela and Leeborough. Nowhere else have I met that peculiar feeling–that literary ether. Perhaps Archburn would have it were it not for the cats. No school ever had it, and libraries are too public. Thank goodness I shall soon be in it and with you.

Yet I do not enjoy saying goodbye to Cherbourg: a good many things happy and unhappy have happened there, and I like the place.

What a curious business about that post card. Thanks for sending it. Its rather alarming to think that our letters can go astray like that.

your loving

son Jack.

At the beginning of September Albert Lewis thought of asking his old headmaster at Lurgan College in County Armagh, William T. Kirkpatrick

(#ulink_a1902a11-5f5e-5204-a22f-40e85c4eeff6) (1848-1921) if he would prepare Warnie for the Sandhurst examination. Following his retirement from Lurgan in 1899 Mr Kirkpatrick had moved with his wife to ‘Gastons’, Great Bookham in Surrey, where he usually had one residential pupil each year whom he prepared for university or college examinations. He agreed to tutor Warnie and the latter arrived at Great Bookham on 10 September 1913.

Jack arrived in Malvern on 18 September to begin his first term as a scholar of Malvern College–or ‘Wyvern’ as he called it in his autobiography. Like Warnie before him, Jack was a member of School House.

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 71-2):

[Malvern College,

Malvern.

21? September 1913]

My dear P.,

I arrived safely as you know by the telegram–reaching Malvern at about half past five. Most of the other new boys had arrived, but one or two didn’t come until the following day. So far everything has been very pleasant indeed.

Luckily I am going to get a study out of which the old occupants are moving today. There will be three other people in it–Hardman,

(#ulink_417c95f3-eed8-501f-946a-3a49e7c390ed) Anderson,

(#ulink_0a24b65c-9b61-519f-8675-7be9648fe947) and Lodge.

(#ulink_830ef811-c7b0-569f-99d5-7d01f56885ee) The last of these is an intolerable nuisance, but the Old Boy manages these things and it can’t be helped.

I have seen quite a lot of W’s friend Hichens,

(#ulink_e21fe9ce-6187-5d2b-abae-6df16c0b33d5) who seems frightfully pleased at being head of the house; going about with a huge note book and a blue pencil, taking down quite unneccesary things.

Yesterday we made our first acquaintance of Smugie

(#ulink_a241e7f9-4e73-5316-bc39-02cc4ed70ded)–a queer, but very nice old man who goes on as if taking a form were a social function–‘a quaint old world courtesy’ as you read in some book. There is one other new boy from the School House in the Upper V–Cooper, who is quite all right.

(#ulink_94eebf92-1392-5510-8447-6a0ddc6fd2e9) We begin ordinary work on Monday.