Collected Letters Volume One: Family Letters 1905–1931

3/11/16.

My dear Papy,

This is a surprise. I can hardly account for it, if it be true–a jump from the rank of second Lieutenant to that of Captain is very unusual, is it not?

(#litres_trial_promo) Even among the temporary people. However, I suppose you will know all about it in your next letter from Big Brother, who will doubtless communicate the facts with much codotto. I only hope we shall not be disappointed in any way.

I thought that I had told you about the colleges, but apparently not. We have finally burned our boats and sent in my name for the big group. This has not been without a good deal of hesitation, but I think on the whole it was the wisest plan. There are very strong arguments on both sides, and we can only hope for the best. The man at New tells us that the candidates for scholarships will be either lodged in the colleges or directed to ‘digs’ selected by the University–apparently Alma Mater takes more care than we supposed, for even her sons elect (Bow! Bow!). He is going to write again of course, and indeed I am surprised that we have not heard from him yet. As to the ‘Accidents’ I really can’t see on what principle my Latin and Greek proses may be quite good for five days and come out with some awful blunder on the sixth–which is what happens. I am sure I take as much trouble on one day as on another. It is at times a bit disheartening, but we pray that the exam may not come on an ‘off day. In the German Kirk thinks I am doing better.

I am reading at present, what do you think? Our own friend ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’.

(#litres_trial_promo) It is one of those books that are usually read too early to appreciate, and perhaps don’t come back to. I am very glad however to have discovered it. The allegory of course is obvious and even childish, but just as a romance it is unsurpassed, and also as a specimen of real English. Try a bit of your Ruskin or Macaulay after it, and see the difference between diamonds and tinsel.

It is one of those afternoons here when the sky is the colour of putty and the rain comes down in sheets for hour after hour: perhaps we are beginning the winter at last. Tell me all the further news about the ‘captaincy’ as soon as you know anything.

your loving

son Jack.

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

[Gastons

8 November 1916]

My dear Arthur,

You certainly have all the luck! I should give anything to be at home for these operas. (Cant get a decent pen so you’ll have to do with pencil this week) As I can’t see them myself I can only hope & pray devoutly that they will be badly sung & staged, your seat be uncomfortable, yr. neighbours talkative & your escapade detected by your terrible parent–Amen.

To be serious: if I were going to three of them I should choose Aida & the Zauberflut

(#litres_trial_promo) straight off without hesitation: the latter is of course old fashioned but, to me–tho’ of course my views on music are those of an ignoramus–the formal old beauty of old music has something very attractive about it. At all events a thing with an overture like that must be good. As to the libretto, my ideas are rather hazy, but an article on it which I read last year in the ‘Times’ gave me the impression of something rather nice & fantastic. These two then I’d certainly go to: in the third it is more difficult to decide. ‘Tales of Hoffman’

(#litres_trial_promo) I thought was a comic opera–at any rate I am sure it’s not in the first rank. ‘Carmen’ & ‘the Lily’

(#litres_trial_promo) are out of the question–the latter being an awful hurdy-gurdy, tawdry business by all accounts. Perhaps on the whole you would get more pleasure out of ‘Faust’ than any: here too you’d have the dramatic interest as well. ‘Pagliacci’ & ‘Cavaleria’ you have seen haven’t you?–Though of course that’s no reason why you shouldn’t see them again.

‘En passant’ I don’t exactly ‘despise’ your opera-book. I think it very useful like a Greek grammar or a time-table, but no more a ‘book’ in the proper sense than they are. For instance I should never think of getting ‘Bradshaw’s Railway Guide’ printed on hand made paper with illustrations by Rackham, wd you? And talking about Rackham I saw in my French list the other day an edition of Perrault’s ‘Contes’

(#litres_trial_promo) ‘avec gravures en couleurs de Rackham’ for 1 fr. 95 (at the present rate of exchange about 1/6, I suppose). If its the same Rackham that wd. be wonderful value, wouldn’t it? Though I daresay Perrault himself (the French ‘Hans Anderson’) would not be up to much,–coming as he did of the most prosaic nation on earth.

It is hardly fair to be sarcastick about my ‘controversies’ as you deliberately asked for both of them. I am afraid I have not made my views on old literature very clear but it can’t be helped. The word ‘feuilleton’ is French, I suppose, originally but quite naturalized. (By the way can the whole of Bernagh not raise a French dictionary? I might give you one in calf for an Xmas box!) It means the horrible serial stories that run in the daily papers: if you’ve never happened to glance at one it’s worth your while. They are unique! Yes, Sir!, it IS correct to say ‘if he like’ & not ‘if he likes’–tho’ a little pedantic.

I thought you would enjoy ‘The Antiquary’. The scene on the beach is fine & tho’ it hadn’t struck me before the whole scenery of ‘Fairport’ is rather like Portsalon. What I liked best was the description of the antiquary’s room at Monkbarns–I wish I could fill up my room with old things like that–also the scene where the doting old woman sings them the ballad at her cottage, but perhaps you haven’t come to that yet. Of course the hero–as usual in Scott–is a mere puppet, but there are so many other good characters that it doesn’t much matter.

What fiddlesticks about Malory being only a translation: I wish you were here that I could have the pleasure of stripping every shred of skin from your bones and giving your intestines to the birds of the air. What do you mean by saying ‘It’ is ‘an old French legend’: the ‘Morte’ includes a hundred different Arthurian legends & as you know the Arthur myth is Welsh. Of course he didn’t invent the legends any more than Morris invented the Jason legends: but his book is an original work all the same. Just as the famous ‘Loki Bound’ of Lewis is based upon a story in the Edda, but still the poem is original–the materials being re-created by the genius of that incomparable poet. As a matter of fact I am at present reading a real ‘old french’ romance ‘The High History of the Holy Graal’ translated in the lovely ‘Temple Classics’.

(#litres_trial_promo) If I dared to advise you any longer–. It is absolute heaven: it is more mystic & eerie than the ‘Morte’ & has [a] more connected plot. I think there are parts of it even you’d like.

I am also reading Chaucer’s minor poems (‘World’s Classics’,

(#litres_trial_promo) a scrubby edition but the only one I can find) and am halfway thr[ough] ‘The House of Fame’, a dream poem half funny & half fantastic that I like very much. But the print, tho’ clear, is very small. As to ‘The Letters of D.O. to W.T.’ I suggest you had better have a look at them in my copy before you do anything. There is a lot in them I think you would like but also a good deal that is dull.

I got this morning a letter from His Majesty the King of the Fiji isles expressing his pleasure at your gift. How much he appreciates it may be seen in his own terse and elegant words ‘Oor mi dalara bo chorabu platlark pho’.

We have had glorious storms here & a big old elm at the bottom of the garden is down by the roots. There is something majestic about a giant tree lying dead like this.

By the way take care of that weak heart of yours: it seems pretty sure that CONSCRIPTION is coming to Ireland now. I for one shall be jolly glad to see some relations of mine (and some of yours) made to behave like men at last. Goodnight, old man–

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 143):

[Gastons]

9th Nov. 1916.

My dear Papy,

As it happened I had heard from Warnie himself shortly after my letter to you and thus got the truth about the promotion.

(#litres_trial_promo) I think we really have a right to plume ourselves on this–the double step is so very rare. You say ‘if inside the next year it is made permanent’: is there any prospect of that’s happening? If so we had better go and live with him or else get him to make us a separation allowance each. In the mean time avoid your bricklaying friend who may have something to say to you on the subject of ‘temporary’ commands. (Ah, these conversations between a brick layer and a brick dropper!)

Your encouragements–even the salts–are very pleasant to read, and it is always a great comfort to be assured that if I lose, I lose nothing more than a scholarship. As to the real prospects of that, they are on the knees of the gods, and possibly the ‘putty sky’ when I last wrote to you had something to do with my impressions. The consolation of having deserved a thing is perhaps one we should all rather apply to our rivals than to ourselves.

I don’t think I shall need any new clothes as I have three good suits (1) besides my everyday one, and two should be enough to take with me. Should I take the dress suit now that we know I shall not go to an hotel? And by the way, when the man says lodgings are to be ‘found’, does he mean that we get them free?

The hero of ‘Lady Connie’ was certainly a detestable fellow, though I must admit that in places I found something rather attractive about him. At the auction of the pictures he is particularly great. But on the whole, as you say, the book is unsatisfactory, and she ought to have married the Pole What’s his name. We are all reading Clodd’s memoirs

(#litres_trial_promo) here, which you will have seen reviewed everywhere. It is rather disappointing though, and the best story in it is the one about the Shah of Persia quoted in the Spectator ‘Library Supplement’. There is a certain vulgarity about Clodd: he seems rather too pleased with his famous friends. I like last week’s ‘Romance’ by the Student in Arms very much–in some ways as much as the other, tho’ perhaps you will not agree with me.

(#litres_trial_promo)

We have got over the rain at last after one or two fearful storms in which a fine old elm at the bottom of the garden, the pride of Kirk’s heart, and of fabulous age, has come down. Today it is sunny and cold. That was a bad business in the Irish Sea, wasn’t it?

your loving

son Jack.

(1). That’s a funny mistake. I suppose I’m trying to make adjectives agree in English.–J.

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

[Gastons 15

November 1916]

Dear Arthur,