Collected Letters Volume One: Family Letters 1905–1931

(#ulink_11c96f88-cfe8-52c7-a9cb-483c6cb2c7d2) Ah! Bill. He is a joy for ever, is he not?–to himself. When you talk about the collision as you do, I take it to be mostly codotta: if I thought otherwise, I would be seriously alarmed. In any case, you must not allow this tendency to dissipation to run away with you at a time like the present when one sees the angel of death flapping his wings from the shores of Totting to hordes that dwell in the skirts of the rising sun, and things of that sort–instead of which, you go about indulging in debauches at the dentist’s. Is this not worthy of the severest censure?

I see no reason to congratulate the Times on its recruiting supplement in any way, nor the country on the necessity (which it allows to remain) for such publications being made. I am afraid that we must admit that Kipling’s career as a poet is over. The line to which you refer is the merest prose, as well as very bad metre. And why is the word ‘stone’ introduced, except to rhyme with o’erthrown?

(#ulink_eb115439-fe96-58d5-88c3-d3536cd9ccc3) On the other hand, if his career be over, we may say that it is creditably over, and if I, for one, had such a record of poetry behind me I should be well satisfied. I conceive that Kipling is one of those writers who has the misfortune in common with Longfellow, of always being known and liked for his worst works. I mean his poetry to the agaraioi means merely the Barrack Room Ballads,

(#ulink_3057118d-4c86-505c-9ba0-176d32c7f9f9) which, however original and clever, are not poetry at all. ‘The brightest jewels in his crown’ as the hymnal would say, are, I suppose, ‘The Brushwood boy’,

(#ulink_d3a2aa42-c014-53ed-a95d-08a685709832) ‘Puck of Pook’s Hill’, ‘The jungle book’ and various of the scattered poems, among which I should place first the dedication piece about ‘my brother’s spirit’ and ‘gentlemen unafraid’. ‘The last rhyme of true Thomas’, ‘The first and last Chantry’ and several others which I forget.

(#ulink_41ae3375-d867-5aef-9609-158457787b13) He is less of a scholar than Newbolt,

(#ulink_1b90f103-dbd4-55f8-a1da-ed6735861e20) but he is also freer from conventional and obvious sentiment: his metres are often too clever. With it all however, I think he will survive, if any of the present crew do. Except Yeats, I don’t know of any other who is in the least likely to.

I myself have been reading this week a book by a man named Love Peacock, of whom I had not heard, but who seems to be famous. He was a contemporary of Lamb, Hazlitt, Byron etc., and an intimate friend of Shelly. The book is a farcical novel called ‘Headlong Hall’,

(#ulink_f5ba1ae1-5086-5b6b-a0a4-b2afa4839c67) and very amusing.

As to the overcoat, I agree with you that it will be better to leave the business till the holydays, as the effort to make Bamford understand anything at all under any circumstances whatever is by no means child’s play. I hope you have not any urgent desire for the other one. According to my computations the half term was about three days ago. As I must now go and add to the glories of Greek literature by a very choice fragment of Attic prose, good night.

your loving son,

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 22):

[Gastons

15? November 1915]

My dear Papy,

The youth’s name is Terence Ford, and I know nothing more about him except that he lived in the suburbs of Manchester during his father’s lifetime. As I never see anything of him except on Sundays–for he spends all day at Leatherhead–I am quite reconciled to his presence and even enjoy hearing his talk about Campbell, which makes me by contrast more sensible of my present good luck. By the way, who is your friend Lord Bacon? I don’t remember any such name in English literature: in fact the name Bacon itself never occurs, to my knowledge, except as the family name of Lord Verulam. (Ahh! A body blow, eh?).

I am sorry to hear about your gums. Are you sure your dental artist is a competent man? A change of advisers often works wonders in medical matters. I always envy the Chinese for their excellent arrangement of paying the doctor while in health and, on falling ill, ceasing it until a cure has been effected. Perhaps you might suggest such an arrangement to the dentist.

I am still busy with my ‘heavy winged Pegasus’ as you call Spenser, and still find him delightful. He is a very lotus land, a garden of Proserpine to people who like pure romance and the ‘stretched metre of an antique song’.

(#ulink_61be56c4-e184-50d7-9349-a7052786ff19) You should give him another trial some time, though not in our abridged edition which leaves out a lot of valuable stuff. I have also been reading in library copies, Schopenhauer’s ‘Will and idea’,

(#ulink_9cfa0374-8b2a-5f5f-a885-97d8a83cc03d) and Swinburne’s ‘Erectheus’ which is another tragedy on Greek lines like ‘Atalanta’,

(#ulink_788bc29e-f1e3-5b93-bb74-7fe7a1aa72f3) though not so good in my opinion. Schopenhauer is abstruse and depressing, but has some very interesting remarks on the theory of music and poetry.

Kirk, I need hardly say, is strong on him, and will talk on the subject for hours–by the way, the real subject to get him on just now is the Mons angels.

(#ulink_8530dbda-bc5c-5bcc-a820-a87bf9d1ff89) You should drop him a cue in your next letter: you know–‘a man was telling me the other day that he had seen with his own eyes’ or something of the kind. And while we are on the subject of the war, I am sure you have noticed the excellent blank verse poem in this week’s ‘Punch’ entitled ‘Killed in action’.

(#ulink_fd8f7d3a-de1c-58db-9b0c-866736f09e2c) I read it with great pleasure, and thought at the time that it would appeal to you.

The weather here is a perfect joke, warmer than July, bright sunshine and gentle breezes. Personally I have had quite enough summer, and should not be sorry to bid it goodbye, though Kirk persistently denounces this as a most unnatural state of mind. I am rather curious to know what the new case of books at home contains. Tell Arthur if you see him, that there is a letter owing to me.

your loving

son Jack

P.S. Was there any talk about Lord Bacon?

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W/LP V: 23-4):

[Gastons

16 November 1915]

My Furious Galahad,

Horace has pointed out that if you buy an article after knowing all its defects, you have no right to quarrel with the seller if you are dissatisfied.

(#ulink_b4fb1874-fdee-5e4f-b74c-ed48e335d528) In the present case, since I told you how slack I was, and openly admitted that I could not promise to keep up a regular correspondance, you have no ground for grumbling if you find that I was speaking the truth. Should you, however, show any disposition to a brief exercise in that fascinating art, I have another excellent excuse: your letters are always shorter than mine: so much so that if I remain silent for a week or so, my amount of letter-writing for the term will still be a good bit bigger than yours.

As a matter of fact I have really had nothing to say, and thought it better to write nothing than to try and pump up ‘conversation’–in the philistine sense of the word. I have read nothing new and done nothing new for ages. I am still at the Faerie Queene, and in fact have finished the first volume, which contains the first three books. As I now think it far too good a book to get in ordinary Everyman’s I am very much wondering what edition would be the best. Of course I might get my father to give me that big edition we saw in Mullans’ for a birthday or Xmas present: but then I don’t really care for it much. The pictures are tolerable but the print, if I remember, rather coarse (you know what I mean) and the cover detestable. Your little edition is very nice, but rather too small, and not enough of a library-looking book. How much is it, and what publisher is it by? I believe I have heard you say that it can be got in the same edition as your ‘Odyssey’, but then that is rather risky, because the illustrations might be hopeless. Write, anyway, and tell me your advice.

By the way those catalogues have never come yet; you might wake the girlinosborne’s up. I hope you are right about my music not being a whim: could you imagine anything more awful than to have all your tastes gradually fade away? Not a bad subject for a certain sort of novel! And talking about music, how did you enjoy Ysaye:

(#ulink_2d7a37ef-5d76-5a34-bedb-68c591860323) you don’t say in your letter. Yes: his brother did play when they were at Guildford: one of his things was a Liebestraum by Liszt, which I did appreciate to a certain extent. Mrs K. has got a new book of Grieg’s with a lot of things in it that I am just longing to hear you play: the best is ‘Auf den Bergen’,

(#ulink_f71efe82-c036-50e6-8a3b-310a4a31591a) do you know it? A lovely scene on mountains by the sea (I imagine) and belled cattle in the distance, and the snow and pines and blue sky, and blue, still, sad water. There’s a sort of little refrain in it that you would love. You must try and get hold of it.

Since finishing the first volume of Spenser I have been reading again ‘The Well at the World’s End’, and it has completely ravished me. There is something awfully nice about reading a book again, with all the half-unconscious memories it brings back. ‘The Well’ always brings to mind our lovely hill-walk in the frost and fog–you remember–because I was reading it then. The very names of chapters and places make me happy: ‘Another adventure in the Wood Perilous’, ‘Ralph rides the Downs to Higham-on-the-Way’, ‘The Dry Tree’, ‘Ralp reads in a book concerning the Well at the World’s End’.

Why is it that one can never think of the past without wanting to go back? We were neither of us better off last year than we are now, and yet I would love it to be last Xmas, wouldn’t you? Still I am longing for next holydays too: do you know they are only five weeks off.

By the way, I hope you have read ‘your Swinburne’ by now: anyway, when you go up to night to the room I know so well you must go and have a look at the ‘Well at the W’s End’. Good-night.

Yours

Jacks

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 33):

[Gastons]

Postmark: 19 November 1915

My dear Papy,

By all accounts I have missed a treat by being lost in a Surrey village during these recent ‘elemental disturbances’ as the man in Bret Harte says–or was it Mark Twain? I love this sort of melodrama in weather, and a night when the cross-channel boats can’t put out is just in my line. Of course we never have any real wind here. The winter however has now set in for good, and ever since Monday there has been a hard frost with a little snow. They have been glorious days all the same, mostly without a cloud in the sky, and a blazing sun that is bright and dazzling but quite cold–grand weather for walking. I love the afternoons now, don’t you? There is something weird and desolate about the perfectly round orange coloured sun dropping down clear against a slatey grey sky seen through bare trees that pleases me better than all those cloud-cities and mountains that we used to see in summer over the Lough in the old days when the crows were going home. There never seem to be such sunsets latterly, do there?

Your friend Byron is not (I devoutly hope) immortal, though his poem about the Assyrians unfortunately is.