Collected Letters Volume One: Family Letters 1905–1931

I wish indeed that I had been with you at Portrush, of which your description sounds most attractive. I once visited Dunluce Castle years ago when I was staying at ‘Castle Rock’, but being a kid did not of course appreciate it as much as I would now.

It is very annoying that after waiting all the holydays for those Columbia records, I should just manage to miss them: mind you tell the girl to send me on the monthly lists of Zono, Columbia & H.M.V. I noticed by the way that the Zono list contains an attractive record with the ‘Seranade’ and ‘Church Scene’ from Faust.

(#ulink_d1273d57-55bf-5d42-a9c4-2b9ebd3239b7) Do you remember the latter–that magnificent duet outside the Church, with organ accompaniment where Gretchen is hunted about the stage with Mephisto behind her? You must hear it and tell me your impressions.

I thought you would enjoy ‘Shirley’. Don’t you see now what I meant when I said that love, apart from physical feelings, was quite different to friendship? If not you must have a brain like a cheese. There is not really much resemblance either between Louis & Gordon or Shirley & Lily. Can you imagine G. behaving to Lily the way Louis does at times to Shirley? I am afraid that, much as I like him, G. hasn’t got it in him. Lily of course is not unlike S., but not so much of a ‘grande dame’, if you know what I mean.

(#ulink_c05cbbca-87ee-5ce1-8326-48f6267ad3ca) When I said that K.[elsie Ewart] was like a valkyrie I meant of course in her appearance–or rather in her open-air appearance. When however you see her in artificial light, both in clothing & natural colouring she is like some thoughtful, exquisite piano piece of Chopin’s–you’d know which better than I.

By the way, tell your sister that I have already written to thank her for the boot-bags, and that when the love she says she’s sending arrives I will write and thank her for it too.

I have been reading the ‘Faerie Queen’ in Everymans both here and at home ever since I left you and am now half way thro’ Book II.

(#ulink_85a7c703-dcdc-52b7-a090-f66b9f17f23e) Of course it has dull and even childish passages, but on the whole I am charmed, and when I have made you read certain parts I think you will appreciate it too.

Talking about poetry, if you have not done so already, go over to Little Lea and borrow Swinburne’s ‘Poems and Ballads’ 2nd Series at once. Read ‘The Forsaken Garden’, ‘At Parting’ (I think that is the name, it begins ‘For a day and a night love stayed with us, played with us’)

(#ulink_a9b8cdcc-7242-55e0-8f2c-24fc4cf380b3) ‘Triads’ ‘The Wasted Vigil’ and ‘At a month’s End’. The latter especially you must read from end to end as a commentary on the love parts of ‘Shirley’, only that in this case the man who tried to tame some such fierce & wonderful character failed instead of succeeding. Then you will relish all the lovely verses at the end, especially that beginning ‘Who strives to snare in fear and danger / Some supple beast of fiery kin’.

(#ulink_d3e8af6f-4b96-5e19-9de6-14a33d17ddc4) Then tell me your impressions. Hope this hasn’t bored you.

I am jolly glad to hear that you are at last starting with Dr Walker

(#ulink_fbe65ff8-b3dd-5f1b-87dc-38515312e51e) and shall expect to find great ‘doings’ in your musical line when I come back. Write soon and don’t forget the catalogues

Yours

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

[Gastons

12 October 1915]

My dear Galahad,

I am frightfully annoyed. I have just been to Guildford to hear Ysaye

(#ulink_55e68cbd-1419-52bb-acf2-fdb1ccc41c5a) and enjoyed it no more than I do the barking of a dog. The apalling thought comes over me that I am losing by degrees my musical faculty: already, as you know, I cannot enjoy things that used to drive me wild with delight, and I suppose in the course of time I shall become absolutely insensible–just like Henry Stokes or my brother or anyone else. There was also a woman called Stralia, a soprano, who sang one lovely thing from ‘Madame Butterfly’

(#ulink_302146d9-d4b4-5a10-a596-654ca4d38814) and lots of stuff I didn’t understand. I havenot the faintest idea what Ysaye played, and I never want to hear it again. I listened as hard as I could, shutting my eyes and trying in vain to concentrate my attention, but it was all just meaningless sound. Of course violin solos were never much in my line but even so, it should not be so bad as this. Now I suppose I have lost your sympathy forever and am set down–who knows but it may be rightly–as a Goth and philistine. But it really is torture to feel things going out of you like that. Perhaps after all, the taste in music developed by a gramaphone is a bad, artificial, exotic one that dissapears after a certain point…The Lord knows!

You ask me how I spend my time, and though I am more interested in thoughts and feelings, we’ll come down to facts. I am awakened up in the morning by Kirk splashing in his bath, about 20 minutes after which I get up myself and come down. After breakfast & a short walk we start work on Thucydides–a desperately dull and tedious Greek historian

(#ulink_4cb85641-ff5c-5444-8446-ece63030dde6) (I daresay tho’, you’d find him interesting) and on Homer whom I worship. After quarter of an hour’s rest we go on with Tacitus till lunch at 1.I am then free till tea at 4.30: of course I am always anxious at this meal to see if Mrs K. is out, for Kirk never takes it. If she is I lounge in an arm chair with my book by the fire, reading over a leisurely and bountiful meal. If she’s in, or worse still has ‘some people’ to tea, it means sitting on a right angled chair and sipping a meagrue allowance of tea and making intelligent remarks about the war, the parish and the shortcomings of every-ones servants. At 5, we do Plato and Horace, who are both charming, till supper at 7.30, after which comes German and French till about 9. Then I am free to go to bed whenever I like which is usually about 10.20.

As soon as my bed room door is shut I get into my dressing gown, draw up a chair to my table and produce–like Louis Moore, note book and pencil. Here I write up my diary for the day, and then turning to the other end of the book devote myself to poetry, either new stuff or polishing the old. If I am not in the mood for that I draw faces and hands and feet etc for practice. This is the best part of the day of course, and I am usually in a very happy frame of mind by the time I slip into bed. And talking about bed, I wish you and your family would have the goodness to keep out of my dreams. You remember my telling you that I dreamed that you and Lily & I were walking along North Street when I saw a ghost but you & she didn’t? That was at Port Salon. Well, last night found the same 3 walking somewhere in town, only this time the place had been captured by the Germans. Everyone had escaped and we were hurrying along in terror through the deserted streets with the German soldiers always just round the corner, going to catch us up and do something terrible. Dreams are queer things.

You ask me whether I have ever been in love: fool as I am, I am not quite such a fool as all that. But if one is only to talk from firsthand experience on any subject, conversation would be a very poor business. But though I have no personal experience of the thing they call love, I have what is better–the experience of Sapho,

(#ulink_33b863ed-fd8f-5bf8-9b55-0430c341f68e) of Euripides of Catullus

(#ulink_f05c9970-7783-5955-aa4c-82792250bb1b) of Shakespeare of Spenser of Austen of Bronte of, of–anyone else I have read. We see through their eyes. And as the greater includes the less, the passion of a great mind includes all the qualities of the passion of a small one. Accordingly, we have every right to talk about it. And if you read any of the great love-literature of any time or country, you will find they all agree with me, and have nothing to say about your theory that ‘love=friendship+sensual feelings’. Take the case I mentioned before. Were Louis & Shirley ever friends, or could they ever be? Bah! Don’t talk twaddle. On the contrary, the mental love may exist without the sensual or vice versa, but I doubt if either could exist together with friendship. What nonsense we both talk, don’t we? If any third person saw our letters they would have great ‘diversion’ wouldn’t they?

In the meantime, why have no catalogues reached me yet? By the time this reaches you, you will I hope have read your course of Swinburne I mapped out, and can send me your views. So glad you too like the ‘Faerie Queen’, isn’t it great? I have been reading a horrible book of Jack London’s called ‘The Jacket’.

(#ulink_e8353f89-713c-55bf-9c72-8b6820e97189) If you come across [it] anywhere, don’t read it. It is about the ill-treatment in an American prison, and has me quite miserabl. Write soon.

Yours

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 24-5):

[Gastons]

Postmark: 22 October 1915

My dear Papy,

The state of our library at Leeborough must be perfectly apalling: how such a collection of ignorances and carelessnesses could have got together on the shelves of our room passes my comprehension. As well, where is the beautiful quarto edition? What is a quarto? I don’t believe you have the vaguest idea, and should not be surprised if the edition in question is merely an 8vo., (-no, that doesn’t mean ‘in eight volumes’, though I too thought so once.) In fact there are a whole lot of things in your letter that I don’t understand. What are ‘vagrom’ men might I ask? I have consulted all the dictionaries at Gastons and failed to find the word. ‘But enough of these toys’ as Verulam remarks.

(#ulink_8fc82163-cbce-5a85-9a34-6f95c64a43d9)

Kirk has just called my attention to an amusing article in the papers which I daresay you have read.

(#ulink_abebcc24-cfab-5450-8187-68da012df5cc) It appears that a Radley boy who had been allowed home for a day to see his brother who was going to the front, overstayed his leave by permission of his father, and on his return was flogged by the Head. If you remember, there was good reason because it turned out that the journey was out of joint or something, so that the fellow couldn’t get home and back in time. Moreover, the father sent a telegram. Well the boy and the father have brought an action, and now we come to the point. One of the witnesses called by the schoolmaster to defend his conduct was a certain Canon Sydney Rhodes James, sometime headmaster of Malvern. As Kirk points out, it is amusing to see that he alone was picked out of all England to defend a pedagogue from the boy he had flogged: so far he ‘outshone millions tho’ bright’. Unfortunately the judge, who I fancy must have known his man, decided that Jimmy’s theories of school management would be off the point, and did not call him. The evidence I suppose would have consisted in an illuminated discourse on ‘the young squirm’s’ conduct.

The chief amusement here is the Zeppelins. We saw the bombardment of Waterloo station going on that last time they were here: at least that is what we were told it was. All you could see were some electrical flashes in the sky caused by the bombs, and of course it was too far away to hear anything. Now that people know that they are about, we are always hearing them going over at nights, but it usually turns out to be a motor byke in the distance. Once we heard the noise of the thump of a hammer at Guildford, and people said that was the dropping of bombs, but I have my doubts.

Isn’t Jimmy good this week in Punch? I am glad to hear that Lily and Gordon are not going out of the neighbourhood, as they would make a bad gap. The sponge etc. must be having a long journey, but I hope they are like the mills of the Gods.

(#ulink_285303a4-86ca-54bd-8c2d-8cec99353447)

your loving

son Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 31):

[Gastons]

Postmark: 11 November 1915

My dear Papy,

As sole companion on a desert island, as a friend to talk to on the night before one was hanged, or, as in the present case, for a helper when one lies stunned in a muddy road, whom would we choose rather than Bill Patterson?