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TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 285-6):

[Gastons

24? January 1915]¹

My dear Papy,

I have arrived and settled down here in due course, and everything progresses favourably, including the German. We had it snowing hard all day on Thursday, beautiful snow and bright frosty sun until Saturday, and are now enduring the thaw. (Yes; I did change my socks. No; there are no holes in my shoes. Yes, thanks, I have plenty of warm underclothing.) I hope you have by this time got rid of your cough, and, did I not know the utter futility of so doing, I should advise you to be careful. However, as you will doubtless reply, my playing the anxious adviser of a patient who will not obey orders, is rather like Satan rebuking sin.² But all joking apart, do take any care of yourself that you reasonably can, and don’t refuse harmless precautions for no reason.

That Smythe boy, the brother of the one who lost his arm, was home for a few days and lunched at Gastons on Wednesday: he tells us that his brother is going out again as soon as he is better–so hard are we pressed that even cripples whose worth is known will be taken in some departments! What this argues as to the paucity of our troops in general, and the old officer’s contempt for the new volunteers who are to come, you will readily imagine. Smythe also directly contradicts the reports of the newspapers about the Indian troops whom he declares to be worthless, and absolutely unfitted for trench fighting: they have too, an unpleasant habit of not burying their dead, which contributes a good deal to the discomfort of European men anywhere near. But of course this is only one man’s story, and the longer this war goes on the less credulous we become. Kirk has many amusing reflections, as usual, on the present crisis, especially when the curate came in yesterday at afternoon tea and told a number of patriotic lies about Germany and the Germans. Kirk then proceeded with great deliberation to prove step by step that his statements were fallacious, impossible, and ridiculous. The rest of the party including Mrs. K., Louis, and myself enjoyed it hugeously.

Thanks for my Classical Library which I have received. In the course of the week I shall return Munro’s Iliad I-XII³ which was not asked for: after which fact has been explained gently to Carson you will tell his remains to give you in exchange Merry’s Odyssey I-XII,⁴ which was asked for. Kirk also tells me to ask for ‘Tacitus’s Agricola’,⁵ any edition except Macmillan’s.

your loving son,

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W/LP IV: 286-7):

[Gastons

26 January 1915]

My dear Arthur,

I wonder would hunting be good sport? The matter ocurred to me, not because I am really interested in it, but because I have just returned from a compulsory chase–trying to find out where the bit at the top of page 2 of your letter was meant to come in. Now, faint & perspiring, I am enjoying the fruits of my labours.

By this time you will probably have finished ‘Villette’.⁶ What do you think of the ending? I can just hear you saying, ‘Cracked–absolutely!’. It certainly is most unsatisfactory, but yet a touch of genius. I fancy it is the only novel in existence that leaves you in a like uncertainty. Merriman is a far cry from the Brontes. Both of course are good, but while they should be sipped with luxurious slowness in the winter evening, he may be read in a cheap copy on top of a tram. And yet I don’t know: of course his novels are melodrama, but then they are the best melodrama ever written, while passages like the ‘Storm’ or the ‘Wreck’ in the Grey Lady, or the Reconciliation between the hero and his father in ‘Edged Tools’, are as good things as English prose contains.⁷

The remark about the Maiden Islands was really quite smart for you. You might have it framed? Also such gems of orthography as ‘simpathise’ and ‘phisically’ which appeared in your last correspondance, tho’ of course I, being almost as bad, have no right to complain.

The weather here is perfectly damnable, there having been scarcely a couple of hours’ sunshine since I left home. Now that my friends have gone, there is nothing to do but sit & read or write when it rains, and consequently I have nearly finished The Morte D’arthur. I am more pleased at having bought it every day, as it has opened up a new world to me. I had no idea that the Arthurian legends were so fine (The name is against them, isn’t it??) Malory is really not a great author, but he has two excellent gifts, (1) that of lively narrative and (2) the power of getting you to know characters by gradual association. What I mean is, that, although he never sits down–as the moderns do–to describe a man’s character, yet, by the end of the first volume Launcelot & Tristan, Balin & Pellinore, Morgan Le Fay & Isoud are all just as much real, live people as Paul Emanuel or Mme Beck.⁸ The very names of the chapters, as they spring to meet the eye, bear with them a fresh, sweet breath from the old-time, faery world, wherein the author moves. Who can read ‘How Launcelot in the Chapel Perilous gat a cloth from a Dead corpse’ or ‘How Pellinore found a damosel by a Fountain, and of the Jousts in the Castle of Four Stones’, and not hasten to find out what it’s all about?

To obey my own theory that a letter should tell of doings, readings, thinkings, I will conclude by saying that I am trying to find some suitable theme for my Celtic narrative Poem: there are heaps of stories but mostly too long. Fare-thee-well.

yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

N.B. This was written on the same day as I got your letter, but I forgot to post it. Mille pardons. J.

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

[Gastons

2 February 1915]

Dear Arthur,

The first essential point for a letter writer to master is that of making himself intelligable to his reader. Or, to come down from my high horse, what was the (it?) in brackets meant for? A thousand pardons for my dulness, only I utterly failed to follow your wheeze: please explain in your next epistle.

I am deep in Morte D’Arthur by this time, and it is really the greatest thing I’ve ever read. It is strangely different from William Morris, although by subject & language they challenge comparison. One is genuine, and the other, tho’ delightful, must, of course, be only an artificial reproduction. You really ought to read your copy of it, or at any rate parts of it, as the connecting chain between book and book is not very tightly drawn. I don’t think it can be the Library Edition, that those people have sent me, as it does not agree with your description at all, being bound in plum-coloured leather, with pale-blue marker attached. However, partly through my keenness to read the book & partly because it was a very handsome binding, I did not send it back.

By the way, is there anything the matter with my father, as I have not heard from him for some time now? Or perhaps it is only this submarine nonsense that makes the conveyance of letters uncertain: which reminds me, that, though I do not usually take much interest in the war, yet it would be unpleasantly brought home to me if I had to spend my holydays in England.⁹

Your remarks á propos of loneliness are quite true, and I admit that what I said before was rather not, as uncongenial companions produce in reality a worse desolation than actual solitude.

I am glad to hear you have read Esmond:¹⁰ it is one of my favourite novels, and I hardly know which to praise most, the wonderful, musical, Queen Anne English, or the delicate beauty of the story. True, I did rather resent the history, and still maintain, that when a man sets out to write a novel he has no right to ram an European War down your throat–it is like going back to Henty!¹¹ Did you ever try that arch-fiend?

I am surprised that there is no snow in Ulster as we had a week of good, thick, firm, ‘picture’ snow–and very much I enjoyed it. And other things too! She is better now, up & about, and we have progressed very rapidly. In fact the great event is actually fixed–fixed!–do you realize that? I don’t think I’ve ever been so bucked about anything in my life, she’s an awfully decent sort.¹² But I suppose this is boring you, so I must cut short my raptures–& my letter.

Yours

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 292-3):

[Gastons]

Postmark: 3 February 1915

My dear Papy,

As you will be by this time accustomed to my using ‘this week’ as synonymous with ‘next week’, I will make no further mention of that matter than to say that the Iliad which you are to exchange is being sent by the same post as this. I must confess to extraordinary dullness in failing to catch any point–if point there be–in your remark, ‘now for a nasty one’: ‘I found a Homer’. Why a nasty one? The fact that you have begun to suffer from a mania for sending poor, unnecessary unoffending books about the channel is nothing which should disturb the peace of mind of the philosophers of Gastons.

Talking about the channel reminds me of this morning’s news. Of course the really important feature of this submarine work is not so much the actual danger to goods and individuals as the inevitable ‘scare’ which it will cause, and the injury to business arising from that. I suppose this was their intention. As for the Zepplin talk, it seems to me to be rather childish folly on the part of the Germans: a few babies and an odd chimney stack cannot afford a recompense proportionate to the labour, expense and danger of managing an aerial raid. The only point is the moral influence, which again depends entirely on the amount of ‘guts’ of the victims.

I am glad to hear that the new Kiplings are poems, as we have had none of them yet. The question as to whether he was a greater poet or proseur is one of those everlasting things. Perhaps however, we may admit that someone else might possibly have written his best poems, but there is only one man alive who could have written ‘Kim’ or the ‘Jungle books’ or ‘Puck’.¹³ I am not sure whether I have read the Seven Seas or not. Is it there that the ballads about the prehistoric Song-Man and Picture Man (the story of Ung) occurs?¹⁴ I remember they make a very interesting criticism on artists and their public, ancient and modern, and impressed me greatly.

We have had one day of spring and are now paying for it by a wind and a rain that would take you off your feet. My German is progressing with such alarming success that I am rather afraid they will put me under suspicious as a spy! Keep well.

your loving son,

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 296-7):

[Gastons]

Postmark: 13 February 1915

My dear Papy,

As Spenser naively remarks at the beginning of about the thousandth canto of his poem,

‘Oh, what an endlesse work I have in hand’,¹⁵

so might a parent doomed to supply an ignorant philosopher with the forgotten necessities of life echo the sentiment. Or in other words there is ‘still one river to cross’, and I really do think this will be the end. What I want is a copy of the Helena of Euripides,¹⁶ which you will find kicking its heels somewhere in the little end room. The shoes have just arrived, for which many thanks: and by the way, when I want to pay for anything, we’ll let you know boss, don’t worry.

I am very annoyed that an opera company should come while I am away from home, although indeed it is a common enough state of affairs. Perhaps we are accustomed to regard John Harrison as an oratorio singer and it would be rather a shock to hear him in opera, although I have often seen records of him in operatic songs. I think you would be wise if you raised the energy to go. Perhaps Uncle Hamilton and Aunt Annie would care to take you–do you think so?

They must be having a rotten time at Glenmachan: ‘les jeunes maries’ particularly are making a bright start, aren’t they? What one always feels about these troubles is that they are so hard on poor Bob.¹⁷ Is it not cruel when a poor fellow is doing his best, working away at his music all night and slaving like a nigger to make things bright and cheerful for everyone else, never letting his conversation flag, saving many a dull hour from ennui and always unselfishly making his wishes subservient to the comfort of the household–is it not hard that he should meet trouble like this? And yet–you will hardly believe it–I have heard people so brutal as to suggest that this ‘angel in the house’ ought to be at the front!

Everything here is pretty much as usual. The weather is delightful and Kirk’s thoughts turn even lightlier than of old to agriculture. His chief ‘stunt’ at present is to point out the fact that he is the same age as Balfour,¹⁸ and ask whether he (K) would stand any chance of getting a job as Headmaster now: and if not, is he to understand that the care of a few schoolboys calls for more qualities of youthful energy and intellect than that of the British Empire? Well, perhaps he’s right; we have often heard him say so at any rate.

I have been reading this week a book by Swinburne from the Library, a ‘Study on Shakespeare’.¹⁹ This is my first experience of his prose, and I think I shall make it the last. ‘Apt alliteration’s artful aid’ may be all right in verse, but it is undoubtedly vicious in prose, as also are words like ‘plenilune’, ‘Mellisonant’, ‘tautologous’, ‘intromission’. And yet at the same time there is great force in the book, and his appreciation of the subject is very infectious.

your loving son,

Jack

P.S. You might give me the Colonel’s address in your next letter. J.

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

[Gastons

16 February 1915]

Dear Arthur,

When I received your epistle, which certainly did not weary one by its length, I was in one of my black moods: like Saul, my evil spirit was upon me.²⁰ Having just had a sufficient glimpse of home and of my brother to tantalize but not to satisfy:²¹ having lost, if not for good, at least for this term, an unparalleled opportunity: and finding a very objectionable visitor in possession of my grinder’s house, you may well imagine that I was in no mood for an extra irritation. I had just, too, been out for a walk, mon dieu, a nightmare! Splashing thro great puddles beneath a leaden sky that rained and rained! However, enough of this.

You ask me what was the matter with me when I was at home. Thank you: I believe I enjoyed excellent health. Of course it is true, that we saw a good deal more of our relations than we wanted, and had none too much time to ourselves: but of course, you, or any member of your household, are always welcome.

As to the other grievance, it really is phenominal ill luck. Of course, like all the rest of her sex she is incapable of seeing anything fair, and when she had been persuaded after a good deal of difficulty to do this, and then I failed to turn up, it is only to be expected that I am ‘left’. In any case, it would be impossible now; as she has gone with her mother for a week to visit some other Belgians in Birmingham.²² But perhaps you are tired of my ‘affaires’.

To go back to the question of holydays (I started to try and write an ‘essay-letter’, but can’t keep it up; excuse me if I meaunder a bit), the last straw came on Sunday afternoon when we were snatching a few moments rest before going off to visit our various relations: who should walk in–but–but–but–Henry Stokes!!!! Dear boy! How thoughtful of him! How kind! What a pleasure for us all! After that, my brother suggested that if ever he got another week’s leave, we should spend it on the Maidens.

You must imagine me writing this in my bedroom at about 11 o’clock, as that damned guest makes it impossible to be comfortable downstairs. Although it was quite spring weather before I went home, a thin snow mixed with rain is falling outside. In spite of all my troubles, I am quite bucked with life to night, and if only the water were hot enough for a bath I should be in heaven. I wonder what you are doing just now?

Which reminds me, you are drifting into a habit of morbid self-pity lately: all your letters are laments. Beware of the awful fate of growing up like that. I never, for my part, saw what was meant by such terms as ‘the releif of confiding ones troubles’ and the ‘consolations of sympathy’: my view is, that to mention trouble at all, in a complaining way, is to introduce into the conversation an element equally painful for everyone, including the speaker. Of course, it all depends on the way it is done: I mean, simply to mention them, is not wrong, but, by words or expression to call for sympathy which your hearer will feel bound to pump up, is a nuiscance.

What a good friend I am, to sit up writing all this stuff to a creature who, just because he ‘doesn’t feel like it’ gives me no more than a couple of lines. Write soon, like a good friend, and tell me all about yourself, and all the local gossip. I am damnably tired, and there’s something the matter with the gas, and I’ve come to the end of my paper. So I must dry up.

Yours

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 302-3):

[Gastons]

Postmark: 3 March 1915

My dear Papy,

I hope this pause in your correspondence does not mean a pause in your health; it is now, in the words of the poet, ‘a long time, in fact a ver-ray considerable time’ since your hand writing appeared on the hall table. One might write a paper on characters according to different days of the week: how a Monday table is associated with a letter from Arthur and a Tuesday table with one from you: although, as it would appear sir, in this case it has lately joined

‘The inheritors of unfullfilled renown ²³

and become as blank and barren as its surly brothers of Saturday and Sunday. Of course we would not forget Wednesday with its ‘Punch’ or Thursday with its Literary Supplement, which is getting by the way poorer and poorer every week (like chalk, you know.)

I don’t know that anything of world shaking importance has happened here: we have had snow and thaw, snow and thaw alternately, with plenty of rain, wind and frost thrown in to make things pleasant. Since Saturday however, there has been some sunshine, and we are hoping for better things.

The good ladies of Bookham still come regularly to tea, and I have the priviledge of hearing what Mrs. Grant-Murray would do if she were in Kitchener’s place,²⁴ and all about Miss Milne’s new maid. The discovery of German spies too, is an art in which they excell: how I wish I knew enough German to let drop a few words occasionally, just as if I had slipped into it by accident! It is a great pity that Kirk won’t come in to afternoon tea, as his commentaries on the whole kodotta would be great.

I essayed a new author the other day whom we have often heard praised and of whom I hoped great things–Landor: but the book I got, a series of imaginary letters called ‘Pericles and Aspasia’²⁵ proved rather disappointing. Indeed I am afraid my appreciation of English prose is very limited, and I certainly cannot fatten on mere prose when the matter is not interesting. However, as the Colonel said in his essay on ‘Kenilworth’,²⁶ the ‘book is not wholly without merit’. I forget whether you said you had ever read him or not?

I suppose we must soon begin to make arrangements about the Easter Holydays–I will not give up that spelling: however there is no hurry as the actual feast comes very late, and it is better to take off the summer term and add on to this. One might observe in passing–purely as a matter of general interest of course–that we must by now have got past half term.

Write soon if you are alright, and tell me all the gossip.

your loving

son Jack

P.S. Has that English word ‘got’ ever struck you? In reading this letter I couldn’t help thinking of it. It is made to mean almost anything–J.

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 303):

[Gastons

7? March 1915]

My dear Papy,

In the bad old days when I was still in the gall of bitterness at Malvern, we used sometimes to hear of schools that had a mid term holiday, and congratulate ourselves on being superior to such kodotta. But it proves to be no bad institution after all. Of course it is short: but then how pleasant to feel at the end that one has only half a term to get through. And one appreciates a week at half term more than the same time in the middle of the holiday. I have not heard from the Colonel since we parted at Euston, but I suppose he arrived at Saille all right–(if that is how you spell it.)

That Gerald Smythe of whom I told you, who lost an arm in the war, was staying with us last week. He is really wonderful: he has only been out of bed about a month and is going back to the front again next week. It does one good to see a person thoroughly cheerful under circumstances like his, and actually eager to be there again. Even in so short a time he has learnt to be quite independant, and can cut his food, light his pipe, and dress–tho’ how a man can tie a tie with one arm, I don’t know.

Did you read Lloyd George’s speech the other day introducing the remark about the German potato bread–‘I fear that potato bread more than all Von Kluck’s strategy’.²⁷ Although, as you have seen, I don’t often read the newspapers, I was glad when Kirk pointed that out to me. Most of the people one hears rather laugh at that bread ‘wheeze’, but I rather think Lloyd George’s is the wiser view. In the way of reading, I have been taking a course of ‘Poems and Ballads’, which, with the exception of the ‘Coign of a cliff’²⁸ I had almost forgotten. It is rather pleasant to discover a book which is already at home for future use.

The weather here is very miserable, and I don’t think there has been an hour’s sunshine since I came back. Kirk asked me to write for Aeneid VII and VIII, published at 1/6 each by Cambridge University Press, editor Sedgwick.²⁹ I am afraid these requests for books are rather numerous, but of course it is Kirk’s to command, mine not to question why, etc.

I have heard nothing from you now since the holydays, except the scant note of which you so rightly said ‘This is not a letter’. I sincerely hope you are not hors de combat. Do drop me a line soon and let me know.

your loving son,

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 304):

[Gastons

21? March 1915]

My dear Papy,

In connection with the ‘question before the house’, I have, as you may have anticipated, only one answer. Apart from the natural inclination to go home if possible, it occurs to me that there is no knowing where such a period of non-homecoming might end. If we could be sure that this policy of frightfulness would be over by midsummer, I should not hesitate to spend Easter in England. But it would be illogical to stay here now on account of the submarines and cross then in spite of them. So that there is the frightful prospect of living on opposite sides of the channel for two, five, or six years.

That of course is unthinkable; and it is on that ground chiefly that I should recommend going home.

A minor point to be considered is that it would be as well to make use of my return ticket while it is still available. The same idea would make me inclined to travel by Fleetwood–for which my ticket is available–in preference to Larne and Stranraer. The difference in the length of the crossing is, I should say, by no means commensurate with the extra expense, and in comfort Fleetwood is probably superior. If these ideas fall in at all with your own, I should suggest that I leave Bookham on Thursday week (the 1st April), which would mean arriving home on the morning of Good Friday. That just leaves a comfortable space of time in which you can write to K. about it.

Last week end was busily employed in reading through De Quincey’s ‘Confessions’³⁰ as a whole, for the first time, from which I derived great satisfaction. How much of it is true? The whole thing reads so like a novel that I am rather incredulous. Anyway it is certainly a splendid piece of English prose, especially in the rhetorical passages where he shows such a happy knack of getting pleasantly off the point. Thanks for the Aeneids: though, with the holydays near, if I had thought, I might have let it stand over.

As you say, our inability to cope with the submarine menace is a very serious thing; but not half so far reaching, so degrading, so essentially rotten as the behaviour of our working classes, who, tho’ so highly paid that they can afford to have three days off per week when nominally at work, yet because of some petty jealousies of their own are refusing to turn out the goods necessary to the military operations which the country is engaged upon. As K. points out, we are the only country which when the war broke out was ‘free’ from militarism, and yet about to engage in civil war: and we are now the only one that cannot secure peace among its working classes. But enough of all this. The weather, as usual of late, is disgusting except for one ‘pet’ day on Sunday. Hope to see you next week.

your loving son,

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

[Gastons

30 March 1915]

Dear Arthur,

How I pity you people who never have known the pleasures and the pains–which are an integral part of the pleasures–of a regular interchange of home-coming and school going. Even the terrors of Malvern were almost justified by the raptures with which one hailed the periodic deliverance. Here, where the minor disadvantages of my sojourns at Bookham are just enough to act as a foil to the pleasures of home, but not so great as to make the earlier part of the term unhappy, the arrangement is ideal. The satisfaction with which a day boy looks forward to a period of rest from his work, can be but the faintest shadow of a boarder’s feeling towards his return from temporary exile.

These last few days! Every little nuiscance, every stale or tiresome bit of work, every feeling of that estrangement which I never quite get over in another country, serves as a delightful reminder of how different it will all be soon. Already one’s mind dwells upon the sights and sounds and smells of home, the distant murmuring of the ‘yards’, the broad sweep of the lough, the noble front of the cave hill, and the fragrant little glens and breazy meadows of our own hills! And the sea! I cannot bear to live too far away from it. At Belfast, whether hidden or in sight, still it dominates the general impression of nature’s face, lending its own crisp flavour to the winds and its own subtle magic to horizons, even when they conceal it. A sort of feeling of space, and clean fresh vigour hangs over all in a country by the sea: how different from the stuffiness of Bookham: here the wind–that is to say, the true, brisk, boisterous irresistable wind–never comes.

And yet, I would not for a moment disparage the beauty of Surrey: these slumbering little vallies, and quaint farmsteads have a mellow charm of their own, that Ulster has not. But just now my End-of-Term feelings will not allow me to think of that. ‘But why’, you will ask ‘am I treated to these lyrical raptures?’ Indeed, Sir, I hardly know. My father wrote a few days ago, and asked if we should risk the submarines and come home, or not. I of course said that we should,–advancing many sage arguments thereto, and suggested leaving here next Friday. I have not been answered yet, but hope to goodness it is coming off. Anyway, a wave of End-of-Terminess came over me to night, and, as I had to communicate with someone, so you, poor fellow, got let in for this!

I had a letter from ‘Her’³¹ the other day, which is all satisfactory, Must shut up now.

Yours

Jack

Jack arrived in Belfast for his Easter holidays on 1 April and was there till 30 April. During this time he wrote the first poems he considered worthy of preservation. One of those written during this holiday was ‘The Hills of Down, and it is found in his Collected Poems (1994). From this time until he went up to Oxford in 1917 Lewis wrote 52 poems which he copied into a notebook bearing the name ‘Metrical Meditations of a Cod’. Fourteen of the ‘metrical meditations’ are found in Spirits in Bondage.

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

[Gastons

4 May 1915]

Dear Galahad,³²

I am surprised! Have you actually come down to enjoying such stuff as ‘The Breed of the Treshams’?³³ I never (for which the gods be thanked) saw or read it, but the name is enough. I admit, I should like to have seen The Shrew,³⁴ and novelties in the way of staging are always rather interesting. I much prefer on the stage–and everywhere for that matter–quiet, tasteful, plain decorations, to tawdry, splendid things.

I feel my fame as a ‘Man-about-the-Gramaphone’ greatly put out by your remarks à propos of Lohengrin Prelude Act III,³⁵ as, I must confess, I never heard of it on Columbia. I do hope it is a good record, as I should like to have it very much: what is the Venusbury music like?³⁶ Is it that wild part that comes at the end of the Tannhaüser overture? Of course you know the Columbia edition of Schubert’s Rosamunde³⁷ has long been at Little Lea, but when last I played it to you, I seem to remember a non favourable verdict from you. I am so glad that you have gotten (That’s correct, you know. ‘Got’ isn’t) the Fire Music,³⁸ as I have been hesitating over it for ages, and your success or failure will decide me. Oh! I had better stop writing about this, as it makes me ‘think long’: not, if you please, in a sentimental way, but with a sensible desire for my books and you and our Gramaphones etc.³⁹

However, I have gotten (notice–again) one great addition to my comfort here, in the discovery of a ‘Soaking-machine’, which conveniences are very scarce in England, owing to the strict customs which prevent the mildest trespassing. My new palace, is at the foot of a great oak, a few yards off a lane, and hidden therefrom by a little row of shrubs and small trees. Completely private, safe from sun, wind or rain, and on the ridge of the only rising ground (you wouldn’t call it a hill) about here. There, with a note book and pencil, I can be as free to write, etc, as at home. So if your next letter comes in pencil, on a sheet torn from a pocket book, you needn’t be surprised. I must find some more of these places as summer goes on, for it is already too hot to walk far.

I bought yesterday a little shilling book about Wm. Morris, his life and his work,⁴⁰ which is rather interesting. To me, at least, for I am afraid you have given up that old friend of ours.

To say that you have something ‘sentimental’ to say, and not to say it, is to be like Janie McN.⁴¹ with the latest scandal, that everyone is told about and no one is told. I don’t quite follow your letter in places. What is the connection between all the rubbish about ‘that nuiscance Arthur’ (you know how all your friends ridicule and dislike that sort of talk) and the wish that I should become sentimental perforce? By the way, I am perhaps more sentimental than you, but I don’t blow a trumpet about it. Indeed, I am rather ashamed of it. Feelings ought to be kept for literature and art, where they are delightful and not intruded into life where they are merely a nuiscance.

I have just finished ‘Shirley’; which I think better than either ‘Jane Eyre’⁴² or ‘Villette’. You must read it. What a letter; every sentence seems to begin ‘I’. However, a good healthy dose of egotism is what you need, while you might pass on a little of your superfluous modesty to Bookham. Sorry you’ve returned the old Meistersingers,⁴³ but think the Beka better value.

Yours

Jack

P.S. What is the name of the ‘Galloping Horse’ piece by Chopin,⁴⁴ I want to make Mrs K. play it.

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W/LP IV: 316-17):

[Gastons

11 May 1915]

Dear Galahad,

Tut! Tut! Must I change your soubriquet? From being the spotless knight of the Grail, are you going to turn philosopher and meet me on my own ground to dispute my shadowy quibbles about the proper sphere of sentiment? Galahad becomes Merlin: who knows but that you may ‘grow besotted of a damosel’, like him, and like him, I may find you when I come home bound fast under a great stone, making a piteous wail to all who pass. And what a relief for the neighbourhood! I think I shall nominate a suitable damosel–say Miss Bradley or Sal Stokes–to besott and bind you. By the way, à propos of Miss Bradley, has she yet recovered (or better still died) from that peculiarly interminable complaint of hers, which prevents the gramaphone being played up at Glenmachen?

But to go back to the sentiment controversy, your objection is nonsense. You argue that sentiment is delightful in art, because it is a part of human nature. Quite right. From that, you deduce that it ought not to be confined to that sphere of human nature where it is delightful–viz. art. That is almost as sensible as to say that trousers are delightful only because they are a part of human clothes: therefore they ought to be worn, not only on the legs, but every where else. Do you maintain that it is a highly commendable and philosophical act to wear trousers, say, on your head? My point is that art is a recepticacle of human thought: sentiment, emotion etc make up that section of human thought which are best suited to fill that definite receptical–and no other. For why, when we have found the best place to keep a thing, should we keep it in other places as well, or instead? By the analogy of the trousers I have shown how ridiculous that would be. As for your idea that to be young, one must be sentimental, let us go into it. Young children are practically devoid of sentiment: they are moved only by bodily pain: young men are a little more sentimental, middle aged ones considerably more so, and old ones the most mawkishly so of all. Sentiment, you see, is a distinct mark of age.

Ah! Having gotten (N.B.) that off our chest, we can proceed to other matters. That little book about Wm. Morris has interested me so much–or re-awakened the old interest–in him, that I have just written up for ‘The Roots of the Mountains’ in Longman’s pocket edition:⁴⁵ it is about the Goths, and is praised in that book as one of the best of the prose Romances. What is the good of getting Anderson in Everyman?⁴⁶ It is true, the tales have considerable merit in ipso (that’s Latin and means ‘in themselves’, Ignorant!): but yet, if any book ever needed or was greatly improved by fancy binding, that is it.

The word Soaking-Machine can hardly be styled ‘slang’, being, as it is, coined by myself for private circulation: I thought you knew what it meant. The word ‘soak’ means to sit idly or sleepily doing nothing, and a S’ing machine is [a] place for this operation, i.e. a comfortable seat. Surely I must often have said to you in the course of our walks ‘Let’s find a soaking-machine’ or ‘Here’s a good soaking-machine’?

I despair of making head or tail of any of your gramaphonic talk, where your extraordinary loose and obscure use of words like ‘latter’ etc makes havoc of the sense. Do you mean that you had another record of the Venusburg music, before you heard it with Lohengrin, à l’autre côté? Or do you know what you mean? Or, lastly, do you mean anything at all. I write such enormous letters (which you probably never read to the end) that, from the way Mrs K. keeps looking at me, I believe she fancies it a billet doux. Why didn’t you give me the number of the Polonaise: and what cheek to say ‘I think it is in A Flat’, when a journey downstairs would make sure.

It has been raining for almost 36 hours here, which is not very cheerful. The idea of spelling melodrama ‘mello-drama’ is really quite ‘chic’: I should take out a patent on it, if I were you. I hope you are in good spirits these days, and that the lady of the office window is kind & in good health. Write soon: you’ve know idea how welcome your letters are. By the by, you might tell the girl in Osborne’s to send on the monthly catalogues to my address here, which you can tell her–Columbia, H.M.V., Zono, Beka, are the chief. Valde.

Yours

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 312-13):

[Gastons]

Postmark: 13 May 1915

My dear Papy,

I suppose I must apologise for being a little behindhand with my bulletin; but I confess I don’t understand the remark about ‘punishing accidents’. I am really sorry if you have been nervous, but I thought the telegram would suffice to set you at ease. However, let me assure you here and now that I and my luggage arrived quite safely at Bookham: there has been no question of accidents at all.

Hard times these must be at Leeboro: I have managed to escape the spring gales both at home and here. Thanks for your exertions about my room, which I hope will prove successful in keeping it from shifting. Perhaps ‘key-lashing’ as an extreme measure would be advisable.

I think the idea of permanent Sunday luncheon at the Rectory is excellent:⁴⁷ perhaps a series of weekly lectures under the title of ‘Anticipation and Realization; their genesis, distinctions and development: together with an excursus on their relations to the Greenshaketything’, would contribute greatly to the gaiety of the occasion. With that disinterested devotion to science, that noble generosity which has always characterised my actions, I not only place the material at your disposal but actually relinquish all claim to authorship. It would be but folly to deny that I experience some natural pangs–but no! Far be it from me to divert the publication of philosophical enlightenment into a channel for the aggrandisment of personal glory. No! Not even when, from the stately halls of Purdysburn⁴⁸ conferred upon you by a grateful and adoring country, you watch the fame of my achievements heaping its most succulent favours upon your own head–not even then, I say, will a sigh of regret escape from the gullet of self sacrifice.

We had some real summer weather for a few days after I came back, but it has seen fit to pour in torrents today. There is nothing of much interest here except that I have heard a nightingale for the first time. I think I mentioned before that they are as common as sparrows about here–in fact they are rather too numerous. In my conceit (Elizabethan), the song of these birds is one of those few things that does really come up to its reputation: at any rate I never heard anything else at all like it.

‘But enough of these tropes’ (as Bacon says at the end of an essay about Masques and stage plays.):⁴⁹ let me soon have another letter as long as a Lurgan spade. The coat has arrived.

your loving son,

Jack

P.S. That cat about accidence, I guess has cold feet about jumping, eh?

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W/LP IV: 323-4):

[Gastons

25 May 1915]

Dear Galahad,

B-r-r-r! Behold me coming with locusts & wild honey about my loins (or is it sackcloth & ashes) to kneel and tremble and apologise for my letterless week. However, qui s’excuse, s’accuse, as the French say, and if you want to seek the real author of the mischief you must go up to heaven, and find the four and twenty elders sitting in a row, as St John says, falling on their faces on the sea of glass⁵⁰ (which must hurt rather but apparently is the ‘thing’ up yonder), and William Morris in white raiment with a halo.

Or, in other words, ‘The Roots of the Mountains’ is the chief cause of my silence. It is not, however, in spite of all this, nearly so good as the first volume of ‘The Well at the World’s End’, although the interest is better sustained throughout. To begin with, I was desparately dissapointed to find that there is nothing, supernatural, faery or unearthly in it at all: in fact, it is more like an ordinary novel. And yet there are many compensations: for, tho’ more ordinary than the ‘Well’, it is still utterly different from any novel you ever read. Apart from the quaint and beautiful old English, which means so much to me, the supernatural element, tho’ it does not enter into the plot, yet hovers on the margin all the time: we have ‘the wildwood wherein dwell wights that love not men, to whom the groan of the children of men is as the scrape of a fiddle-bow: there too abide the kelpies, and the ghosts of them that rest not’,⁵¹ and such delightful names as The Dusky Men, The Shadowy Vale, The Shivering Flood, The Weltering Water etc. Another thing I like about it is that the characters are not mediaeval knights but Norse mountain tribes with axe & long-sword instead of horses & lances and so forth. However, though it is worth having and well worth reading, I don’t know if its really worth buying. The next time I get a Morris Romance it will be one of the later ones, as the ‘Roots’ is one of the first, when, apparently, he hadn’t yet found his feet in prose work.

On Saturday last we were over at a little village near here, where Watts the painter lived:⁵² there is a little gallery, a lovely building, designed by himself, containing some of his quite famous pictures like ‘Orpheus & Euridyce’, ‘Endymion’, ‘Sir Galahad’ etc, which I always thought were in the Louvre or the Tate or some such place. Of course I don’t really quite understand good painting, but I did my best, and succeeded in really enjoying some myself, & persuading the other people that I knew a tremendous lot about them all.

What a grand dialectician, our Little Arthur is!!⁵³ You reply to my elegant tirade against sentiment by stating your old thesis that it ought not to be suppressed, without a single reason. You don’t admit my arguments, and yet make no endeavour to answer them. And because I choose trousers for an example you say that it is ‘very funny’. Moi, I didn’t know trousers were funny. If you do, I picture your progress from the tram to the office something thus: ‘Hullo! Good lord, there’s a fellow with trousers over there! And there’s another. Ha-Ha–Oh this is too screaming. Look–one-two-three more–’ and you collapse in a fit of uncontrollable merriment. Doesn’t this sort of truck fill up the paper? But in point of fact, I’ve lost your last letter, and so don’t quite know what to talk about.

Thanks for carrying out my message to Miss Whatdoyoucallher? about the monthly catalogues, which are now arriving in due order. That’s rather a pretty girl, the H.M.V. infant prodigy 18 year old soprano, but she doesn’t seem to sing anything worth hearing. Hear your brethren are going to join a friend’s ambulance corps, whatever that may be. Give them my congratulations and all the usual nonsense one ought to say on such an occasion. I hope they will get on famously and come back with Victoria crosses and eye-glasses, which seem to be the two goals of military ambition.

It is hot as our future home down below, here, but the country is looking delightful, & I have found one or two more SOAKING MACHINES (I will use that word if I want to) and so am quite comfortable. I hear you have taken to getting heart fits in the middle of the sermon at Saint Marks and coming out–I only wish you’d teach me the trick.

And now, the kind reader, if there still is one, is going to be left in peace. Do write soon, and forgive your suppliant

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 313-14):

[Gastons]

Postmark: 25 May 1915

Dear Papy,

I don’t seem to have heard from you for some time now, but I suppose I am a little behindhand myself. There has been great excitement here this week end: when I came home from Church on Sunday morning I found a note waiting for me to say that Kirk and Mrs. Kirk had gone to Bristol where they had heard by a telegraph that Louis was in hospital. It appears he got a mild species of sun stroke while working with big guns down there at a place called Lydd. It was not very serious–in fact I gather somewhat of a mares nest–and K. is back this evening while Mrs. K. is staying at Bristol for a few days.

We have started our real summer here, and it is pretty warm. How does the weather suit the home farm, where I hope the tragic gardeners are in good form? What between pigeons and gardeners and white Homburg hats, Leeborough must present quite a seasonable spring idyll (with a double ‘l’.)

Mrs. K. and I were over at a place called Compton beyond Guildford on Saturday, where the attraction is a little pottery for fancy tiles and sich, founded by my friend William [Morris], who, as you know, besides being a poet was a wall paper designer, a potter, a hand loom weaver and everything else you can think of. Nearby is a gallery of Watts’s pictures. He, it appears, was one of that same set, and there are a lot of quite swell things there, such as his ‘Paolo and Francesco’, ‘Orpheus and Euridyce’, and ‘Found Drowned’ etc., which I always imagined to be in some big place like the Louvre or Tate. It was quite interesting.

Any news from the Colonel lately? I have not heard from any one except Arthur for a long time now, so do try and raise a letter soon. Or is this silence a result of a literal obedience to my last advice a propos of lectures to the members of the Select Vestry? I hope the doctors don’t think it serious.

There are plenty of nightingales about now, and in fact they are rather a nuisance. I am afraid this is rather a scrappy letter, but I am writing rather late at night, just before going to bed, and am a bit sleepy. I should like to know what is going on at Leeborough just now. I suppose these are the days of no fires, and sunset on the seat behind the laurels, with the crows coming home overhead, and Tim on the look out for wasps.

I hope you are keeping well and cheerful. Write again soon.

your loving,

son,

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 322-3):

[Gastons

28? May 1915]

My dear Papy,

I am sorry to hear that the mental digestion of my parent is so weak, and blame myself for giving it such strong meat. Perhaps a course of ‘Decalettes, pure and simple things’, or nursery rhymes would meet the case. (Now we can proceed to the letter.)

Of course it is a very good thing that Bernagh is contributing to the forces, but one cannot help thinking that a better choice than the ‘Friend’s Ambulance Corps’–which really does sound rather sleepy–might have been made.⁵⁴ However, I suppose ‘those also serve’⁵⁵ though the trenches impress the outside spectator more than an ambulance corps. A propos of conscription, I sincerely hope that one of two things may happen. Either that the war may be over before I am eighteen, or that conscription may not come into force before I have volunteered. I shouldn’t fancy going out to meet the others–as a conscript. I see the Daily Mail is being burnt everywhere for advocating the plan.⁵⁶ How excellent a proof of the necessity of a petty little plan like sending an envelope full of ashes–or most likely it was a woman. There is absolutely no news here, and the weather is very hot. Mrs. K. has now returned again from Bristol where she left Louis getting on all right.

I like your garden picture. I can imagine the whole scene, and especially the conversation with the Greeve’s on the road, we have heard so many like it before. The country at home must be looking delightful now, and I wish I could see it, but most of all the sea. If Bookham were not so far inland it would be delightful too–and indeed to do it justice it is very pretty. The remark about the fates is excellent from a literary point of view, only I don’t like to think of you thinking those sort of things in such a place–and with a white Homburg hat too. And yet I remember that Swinburne has some remark about the impossibility of changing ‘wings for feet, or feet for wings’. I suppose if we Lewis’s are made in that mould of reflective gravity which troubles deepen into melancholy, it is the price which we pay for a thoughtful and feeling mind. About the question of retrospect and anticipation (dangerous word for you, sir), there is a sentence in one of W. Morris’s prose tales that I am reading at present, which tho’ perhaps not strictly in point, is yet well worth remembering in its archaic charm and quaint nobility:–‘Thus then lived this folk in much plenty and ease of life, though not delicately nor desiring things out of measure. They wrought with their hands and wearied themselves: they rested from their toil and feasted and were merry: tomorrow was not a burden unto them, nor yesterday a thing that they would fain forget: life shamed them not, nor did death make them afraid.’⁵⁷ There is another way of looking at life: impossible it may be in a sophisticated age, and yet I think he would be a happy man who could do so.

What time do my letters reach you in the day? In letter writing one ought to know when and where the other person reads, as it makes more of a semblance to real conversation. I must dry up now.

your loving son,

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

[Gastons

1 June 1915]

Dear Galahad,

Your interesting epistle which I have read with wonder and delight, contains the following gems of Arthurian style

1 ‘I don’t suppose you will object to my coming with me’

2 ‘Read this with discust’

3 ‘I am talking now of sensulity.’

Dear old Galahad! That’s an unusually good budget even for you: I am afraid this ‘sensulity’ of yours–I never saw the word before but I suppose you know what it means–must be beginning to tell on you.

As to your first question, the only holyday I propose to take is a week or so with my relations at Larne, and my father’s offer, which I take to be purely formal, I would not much care to accept. I hope you will be sensible enough to spend your holydays at home with me, seeing each other and talking & going for long walks over the hills, instead of going off to some godless place by the sea. My point is that I should be going to my Aunt’s in any case, and 1 week or so from home is quite enough for me: as well, I don’t think it very decent to leave my father any longer. But don’t let this prevent your going somewhere. All I want to point out is, that my refusal of a joint holyday, is not from a design to avoid you, but because I don’t want to be away from home too long. Of course, if you would condescend to honour Larne with your presence while I am at my Aunt’s, I should be very bucked to see you: but you might be bored. However, we can talk all this over when we meet at the end of July.

Odeon records are the most fascinating and delusive bait on the Gramaphone market. Cheap, classical, performed by good artistes, they present a jolly attractive list: but they wear out in a month. Of course there are exceptions, and I can play you some selections from Lohengrin which I have on that make, and which have worn well. On the whole however, I wouldn’t advise anyone to get Odeon records, as a short-lived record is one of the most dissapointing of things. I foresee, by the way, that your way of getting records is like Jane McNeil’s way of getting books–that is you use a shop like a free library: whenever a record is worn out, back it goes to the shop, and you have a new one in its place. Which reminds me, my monthly catalogues for this month haven’t turned up yet, so you must shout at Miss Thompson.

With reference to your remarks about sensuality–je vous demande pardon–‘sensulity’, I don’t know I am sure, why you have been suffering especially in this way just now. Of course when I was particularly so last term, there was a reason, about whom you heard perhaps more than you wanted. You ought to be past the age of violent attacks of ’EPΩTÍKA (Greek); as well you are Galahad the spotless whose ‘strength is as the strength of ten, because your heart is pure’. Perhaps you would understand now, what you didn’t understand when I started the subject last hols, <what I mean by the ‘sensuality of cruelty’: again perhaps you would not.>

Last week I got a copy of that little book of yours on Icelandic Sagas, which I found very interesting, and as a result I have now bought a translation of the ‘Laxdaela Saga’⁵⁸ in the Temple Classics edition. I never saw a Temple Classic before; did you? In binding, paper, & ‘forma’ (by which I include the aspect of a typical page, its shape, spacing, lettering etc) they are tip top, and justify the boast of ‘elegance’ made in their advertisements. They are, I think, far better value than Everyman’s at the same price.

As to the Saga itself I am very pleased with it indeed: if the brief, simple, nervous style of the translation is a good copy of the original it must be very fine. The story, tho’, like most sagas, it loses unity, by being spread over two or three generations, is thoroughly interesting. Just as it was interesting after the ‘Well at the World’s End’ to read the ‘Morte’, so after the ‘Roots’, a real saga is interesting. I must admit that here again the primitive type is far better than Morris’s reproduction. But that of course is inevitable, just as Homer is better than Vergil.

Sorry to hear my father is so low, but I write to him regularly, and the last was really rather a long and good effort. Hope you’re all well at Bernagh.

Yours

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

[Gastons

8 June 1915]

Dear Galahad,

I seem to have trod on somebody’s corns over this question of a holyday: I expressly said that I did not wish to keep you at home on my account if you wished to go elsewhither. To be brief, my whole answer was that I refused your kind proposal because I was already booked, adding that I should not care to take another holyday in addition to that at Larne. Now what is your grievance–for grievance you must have or you would not write such good grammar. Is it because I won’t throw up my previous invitation in favour of yours? That would be rude. Is it because I will not accompany you on another holyday? That is selfish of you, to expect me to give [up] my fleeting sojourn at Leeborough for your amusement. Is it because I mildly suggested that you need not go for a holyday? There was never any obligation on you to accept such a scheme. And as for your hot weather–je me moque de cette là, it is bitterly cold to-night! How funny that I always prove everything I want in argument with you but never convince you!

Now, having despatched our inevitable weekly dialectical passage-at-arms (by the way, you have never replied to my theory of trousers), we may proceed to the letter. I admit that the ‘I hope you are all well’ is a blot on my character that can hardly be wiped out: I didn’t think I had sunken so low as that, and will try to reform.

I thought you would agree with me about Mansfield park:⁵⁹ I should almost say it was her best. I don’t remember the names very well, but I think I rather liked Edmund. Do get a Temple Classic. You will bless me ever after, as they are really the best shillings worth on the market. I hope I may prove a false prophet about the Odeon records, and that you will have better luck in them than I. Now that it is drawing a little nearer my return, I begin to hanker again for my gramaphone: but I am not consoled even with the catalogues, so you must stir up the damosel again. I am still at the ‘Laxdaela Saga’ which is as good as ever, and I insist upon your reading it too.

On Saturday I met the prettiest girl I have ever seen in my life (don’t be afraid, you’re not going to have to listen to another love-affair). But it is not her prettiness I wanted to tell you about, but the fact that she is just like that grave movement in the Hungarian Rhapsody (or is it the ‘dance’?) that I love so much.⁶⁰ Of course to you I needn’t explain how a person can be like a piece of music,–you will know: and if you play that record over, trying to turn the music into a person, you will know just how she looked and talked. Just 18, and off to do some ridiculous warwork, nursing or something like that at Dover of all places–what a shame!

By the way, that would be a rather interesting amusement, trying to find musical interpretations for all our friends. Thus Gordon⁶¹ is like the Pilgrims chorus from Tannhaüser, Kelsie a bit like the Valkyries⁶² only not so loud, Gundred⁶³ like the dance-movement in Danse Macabre, and Bob like a Salvation army hymn. We might add yourself as a mazurka by Chopin, wild, rather plaintful, and disjointed, and Lily like, well–a thing of Grieg’s called ‘The Watchman’s Song’⁶⁴ that you haven’t heard. I think I must write a book on it.

By the way (all my sentences seem to begin like that) I am very sorry this is a bit late, but I was writing to my father and brother last night. Now, good night, Galahad, and be good and talk sense the next time you do me the honour of arguing with me.

Yours

Jack

P.S. What about the question of ‘sensulity’?

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 319-20):

[Gastons]

Friday [18 June 1915]

My dear Papy,

I am writing this immediately after reading your letter, but I mean it to belong to next week. Perhaps I shall not post it till Monday to equalize the dates, but at any rate it is much easier to write to you just after reading yours. I somehow seem to be unable to write to you properly now-a-days: perhaps because we make jokes nearly all the time when we are together, and household humour, though the funniest of all things to those who understand (a propos of which, read the first Roman story in ‘Puck of Pook’s Hill’),⁶⁵ can’t really be written down. Whereas if I try to be serious, I merely succeed in being ‘stuffy’. The last word describes exactly what I mean. However, as Plato says, the written word is only a poor faint shadow of real conversation, in which, among people who know each other well, the merest suggestion explains a train of thought which the most elaborate written explanation leaves obscure, lifeless and formal.⁶⁶ Still, as it would be expensive to telephone to you every week with trunk calls–do you remember the lady in ‘The Whip’?⁶⁷–we must do the best we can.

I think we may reasonably hope that the war will be over before it begins to concern me personally. At the same time, the knowledge that I had gone as soon as possible to the front would not, I fancy, be a very substantial comfort to me if I arrived there as a conscript. All the people on whom that name has fallen would be lumped together without distinction in the minds of our Tommies–who indeed might be excused for feeling some warmth in the circumstances. Then there is the other possibility that Europe will be at peace before I am eighteen. In that case I believe my career at Oxford would be, if anything, a little easier than usual, owing to lack of competition. It would be ghastly however to reckon up that condition as an advantage–when we remember what it means. I am sorry for your sake that ‘Mr. Carr’⁶⁸ has gone, but after all, from his point of view, it was inevitable. There is not much objection made to the teeth now, it seems!

I will certainly write to the Colonel as soon as you send me his address, which I am not quite sure of. I don’t think I will make it a birthday letter, which–from me at any rate–would not appeal to him: I may find some ‘crack’ however to interest him. Isn’t it interesting to note the different things we expect from different people? If I imitated your style exactly, and could write a letter to the Colonel almost the same as a typical one of yours, the result would be merely irritating: if you tried the same experiment with my style, or absence of style, the result would be the same. Yet both, I believe, would be acceptable from the right authors.

This is a digression: to go back to Warnie, it certainly must be very depressing to see so many of the Malvern lot–for whom he had a regard as genuine as it was inexplicable–dropping off like this. ‘It is an ill wind’–the proverb is rather old. But one result of the war to us seems to be that you and W., if I may say so, understand each other better than you have done for some time.

I am learning lots of things here besides the Classics–one of them being to take cold baths: and such an artist I am becoming that you will hardly know me when I get home for the brevity of my sojourn in the bath room and the prodigious amount of noise I make over it. The weather is still hot and a trifle oppressive here, but agreeable in the morning and evening.

I have been devoting this week to the reading of Othello,⁶⁹ which I like as well as any Shakesperian play I have read. The part of Iago, to my mind, is something of a blemish, and the fact that his pitiless malignity has absolutely no motive leaves him rather a monster (in the Classical, not the newspaper sense of the word), than a human character. But then of course Shakespeare at his best always works on titanic lines, and the vices and virtues of Lear, Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello, Desdemona, etc., are magnified to a pitch more splendid and terrible than anything in real life.⁷⁰

If I leave here on the 30th July, so as to arrive home on the last Saturday of that month, the exact half of the term ought to have fallen about four hours ago. That will make the usual twelve weeks. Only six more now! That sounds perhaps too like the old days at Malvern, but don’t suppose that because I will be glad to see you again, I am not happy and more than happy at the K’s.

your loving,

son,

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

[Gastons

29 June 1915]

Dear Galahad,

Did the Norns or Dana holy mother of them that die not, weave for us in that hour wherein our mothers bare us, that never should we write to each other without the first page being occupied by argument? Because, whether by the decree of fate or no, this has always been the case. First it was Shee v. Souteraines, then Tears v. Trousers, and now Larne v. Leeborough–which by the way means Little Lea. How you can have known me so long without picking up the words & tags which I use every day passes my understanding–unless I am to conclude that you are asleep half the time I am talking to you, which is very probably so.

Well about this infernal holyday: as your infantile brain–for which I have catered on this envelope–is incapable of swallowing my previous very elementary argument, I will explain my position once more in very simple terms, as follows:–

I have eight weeks vacations.

I have been invited to stay 10 days with Mrs Hamilton.⁷¹

I have accepted her invitation.

I intend to keep that promise

I don’t want to be any longer away than 10 days.

I don’t want to keep you at home on that account.

I therefore decline your kind proposal.

I am very sorry

I hope you understand. How’s that?

It may be true that it is easier to assign music to people we know, than to conjure up people to fit the music, but I deny that anyone’s character is really unlike their appearance. The physical appearance, to my mind, is the expression and result of the other thing–soul, ego, ψυχη, intellect–call it what you will. And this outward expression cannot really differ from the soul. If the correspondence between a soul & body is not obvious at first, then your conception either of that soul or that body must be wrong. Thus, I am ‘chubby’–to use your impertinent epithet, because I have a material side to me: because I like sleeping late, good food & clothes etc as well as sonnets & thunderstorms. The idealistic side of me must find an outlet somewhere, perhaps in my eye, my voice or anything else–you can judge better than I. And the other side of me exists in my countenance because it exists also in my character.

‘But’, I hear you saying, ‘this is all very well. Only what about the practised flirt with the innocent schoolgirl face & the murderer with a smile like an old woman?’ These are only seeming exceptions. The girl has or imagines she has that sort of disposition somewhere in her, or it wouldn’t be on her face: as a matter of fact, it is always ‘innocent’ (which means ignorant) people who do the most outrageous things. The murderer too, may be really a peaceful, kindly ‘crittur’, and if circumstances drive him to violence, the initial mould of the character and therefore of the face remain just the same.

I remember reading in a book called ‘The open Road’⁷² an extract from Hewlet’s ‘Pan and the Young Shepherd’⁷³ which I thought splendid. Thanks to our Galahad’s detestable handwriting I can’t tell whether your book is the ‘Lore’ or the ‘Love’ of P. In any case I have never heard of it before, but, from your description, am very eager to read it. I also saw a copy of this author’s ‘Forest Lovers’⁷⁴ in Carson’s last hols, but it did not attract me much. Is this new one in a decent edition?

I am glad to hear that you are keeping up the ‘illustrative’ side of your art, and shall want you to do some for my lyric poems. You can begin a picture of my ‘dream garden’ where the ‘West winds blow’. As directions I inform you it is ‘girt about with mists’, and is in ‘the shadowy country neither life nor sleep’, and is the home of ‘faint dreams’. With this Bädekers guide to it, you can start a picture. You remember, I scribble at pen and ink sketches a bit, and have begun to practise female faces which have always been my difficulty. I am improving a very little I think, and the margins of my old Greek lexicon as well as my pocket book now swarm with ‘studies’.

Only four weeks now till I shall be home again! Isn’t that a buck, at least for me–and no one else in the world really counts of course. What nonsense you talk about that ‘poor man’, my father. I am afraid it is true that he must bore Lily, but there is no fear of her boring him. I sympathize however, with the havoc which he must have wrought with a serious musical evening.

How is your gramaphone progressing, by the way, and how many records have you listed up to date? I am so sorry if this Liliputian writing has blinded you for life, but we have run out of the other sort of note paper.

Well (Farewel)

Jack

P.S. Have begun the ‘Proffessor’⁷⁵ and as read far as the heroe’s arrival at Brussels. It is shaping very well. I believe you have read it have you not–J.

Warnie arrived in Bookham from France on 4 July 1915 and Jack, after some resistance from Mr Kirkpatrick, was permitted to accompany him home. He returned to Bookham on 9 July.

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 1-2):

[Gastons

10? July 1915]

My dear Papy,

In reply to your note which has just this minute been handed to me, I suggest to your notice the following considerations. In the first place you ask ‘why were you told £1-10s?’ I am not aware that I ever told you anything at all about the subject: the sum of money–whatever it was–was handed by Kirk to Warnie at the request of the latter, who took charge of it throughout, together with both tickets and every other arrangement. It never passed through my hands, and I am not prepared to say with any certainty what it amounted to. I do not remember mentioning the matter while at home. You have therefore applied to the wrong quarter.

Secondly, supposing for purposes of argument that I did tell you that it was £1-10s, what then? As I have already pointed out, I had nothing to do with the money, and Warnie not I, was responsible for its being borrowed. It follows that I could have had no conceivable motive for misrepresenting the amount. If there was to be any blame attached, it was not I who incurred it: I need never even have mentioned it. Accordingly, if I said anything untrue, it must have been through a mere error–and even at that an error by which I could gain nothing.

Thirdly, do not be annoyed if I descend to a rather crude, a fortiori line of argument. The tone of your letter, no less than the haste with which it was dispatched, suggests an ugly suspicion. This can of course be very easily answered. Setting aside all question of honour, I ask you to credit Warnie and myself with commonsense. Granted then, that for some inscrutable reason we wanted to conceal the amount he borrowed from Kirk, would we have been such fools as to have told a lie which must inevitably be detected as soon as the latter wrote to you? And of course, we would have known that K. must write to you to get his money back.

And so, it follows that either Kirk is wrong, or else if Warnie gave you the wrong figures it must have been by accident. That I knew nothing of it, and was not concerned in the transaction, has already been shown.

Last of all, if anything in this letter should seem to indicate that I am hurt or offended, I assure you it is not the case. I am perfectly convinced that your note was not meant to be insulting, though, from its nature, it could hardly help it. In any case it is as well to make things clear, even at the risk of some little superfluous violence. I am,

your loving son,

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 321-2):

[Gastons

19? July 1915]

My dear Papy,

I sincerely hope this silence of yours doesn’t mean anything wrong with your health. Arthur says you didn’t seem very well the last time he was over at Leeborough, so I am not quite easy in my mind. If however anything is wrong, you might tell Aunt Annie to write to me with particulars, and also to forward W’s address, which since I wrote for it in my last letter has become even more necessary as he has now written to me. I should not like him to think that he is forgotten or that his letter has not reached me, but I cannot reply to him until I hear from you.

Not even in Bookham can one be safe from the hoi polloi; a stubborn refusal to learn tennis is no longer a protection among people who will inflict croquet instead. I was out on Wednesday for tea and croquet and again today (Saturday) for the same entertainment, plus a great deal of conversation. However, this I suppose is part of the curse inherited from our first parents: my private opinion is that after the words ‘In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou earn thy bread’⁷⁶ another clause has dropped out from the original text, running ‘In the exasperation of thy souls shalt thou attend social functions’. On the whole, though I do not of course know anyone as well as at home, I like a good many of those I meet: the world indeed (as you have reminded me on innumerable occasions), is full of nice people. And if it must be full at all, I suppose it is as well that they should be nice.

Talk, of course, runs mostly on the war. I have always thought it ridiculous for people to talk so much on a subject of which, in the majority of cases, they are really very ignorant. Books, art, etc., passing trivialities and even gossip are topics on which everyone can speak with more or less authority. We prefer however to pass our time in criticism of politics, or at present the war–subjects on which only specialists should speak. This endless criticism by ignorant men and women of public men, whose positions they do not understand, I always hear with annoyance.

The Colonel writes to me cheerfully though briefly, and wants an answer. I suppose he tells me nothing that you don’t know already. Bathing and a sack of books seem to be his chief consolations in ‘this detestable country.’

I have been reading nothing since Othello but a translation from the Icelandic, and stray articles etc. In Greek we have begun Demosthenes. Of course oratory is not a sort of literature that I appreciate or understand in any language, so that I am hardly qualified to express an opinion on our friend with the mouthful of pebbles. However, compared with Cicero, he strikes me as a man with something to say, intent only upon saying it clearly and shortly. One misses the beautiful roll of the Ciceronian period, but on the other hand, he is not such a—blether.⁷⁷

Do try and write soon, or, if the worst comes to the worst, get Aunt Annie to do so.

your loving,

son,

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W/LP IV: 299-300):

[Gastons

24 July 1915]

Dear Galahad,

I have debated more than once as to whether you would prefer a tired and perfunctory letter written in good time during the week, or a fresh and willing [one] a few days late on Saturday evening. Thinking that you would choose the latter, and knowing I would–here we are.

What on earth are you doing reading the Sowers?⁷⁸ A Russian mystery-story full of wise diplomatists and impossible women–it ought to be clad in a bright red cover, with a crude picture of Steinmitz saying ‘The Moscow Doctor–and your prince!!!’ from the head of the stairs, and set on a railway bookstall. But, perhaps I am wrong. Of course it has points, but you are worthy of better things. Never read any George Eliot⁷⁹ Myself, being no great hand at novels but admire your energy in that line.

Talking about books, I am determined to teach you to like poetry, and will begin next hols. on Coleridges ‘Christabel’. Don’t be put off by the name. It is exactly the sort of romantic strangeness and dreaminess you & I like, a sort of partner to the Ancient Mariner,⁸⁰ as Danse Macabre is to the March of the Dwarfs.

Also–I hope all these schemes aren’t boring you–you are going to help me to improve my drawing next hols. Figures I can do tolerably, but from you I must learn the technique of the game–shading, curves, how to do a background without swamping the figures etc. Of course this will all be in pen and ink which is the best medium for my kind of work–I can imagine your smile at my calling such scribbles ‘work’, but no matter. I am longing to get home again now, and expect I shall arrive next Saturday.

Yes Mrs K. has played the Polonaise; we found the right one without difficulty, and tho’ she made some remarks about the hardness of it I at length persuaded her. Now, you know, I never flatter: so you may take it as solemn truth when I tell you that, if I admired your playing before, I understood its true value far better when I compared [it] with Mrs K.–by no means a contemptible craftsman. To hear the lovely galloping passages rendered correctly, even well, but without your own frank enjoyment of the work, your sympathy with the composer and your inimitable fire and abandonment (this sounds like an essay but I mean every word of it), was a revelation. You threw yourself into it, and forgot yourself in the composer: Mrs K sat there, amiable, complacent and correct, as if she were pouring out tea. Now, while they’re not all as bad as she, still you alone of the people I have heard play set to the matter properly. And for that reason, a piece, by you, if it were full of mistakes (tho’ of course it wouldn’t be) would be better than the same piece faultlessly played by–say, Hope Harding.⁸¹ This is a rare gift of yours: you should yet do great things with it: you are a fool if you don’t cultivate it. Perhaps, because you paint and read as well as play, you realize the imagination of a composer’s mind perfectly, and can always bring out to a sensible (in the old sense of the word) listener anything at all that there is in the notes. Of course, all this is the praise of an amateur: but the praise of an honest amateur who has a genuine, tho’ non-techniqual taste for music, is worth something at least.

I agree with you that the music of Lohengrin, so far as I know it is delightful: nor do I see what is wrong with the story, tho’ of course the splendid wildness of the ‘Ring’⁸² must be lacking. On the whole, however, I am not sure that any music from it I know, is not perhaps cast in a lower mould than ‘Parsifal’⁸³ & the ‘Ring’. Although, indeed the prelude–which you wouldn’t listen to when I played it–is quite as fine I think as that from ‘Parsifal’.

What is your opinion of W. Jaffe–little Vee-Lee?⁸⁴ He did one thing for which he can never be forgiven–dropping in and staying till eleven on the first night of my brother’s leave. The Hamiltons came over on another, so we had only one evening alone together in peace and comfort. On the whole, tho’, he is a decent crittur, I suppose. Have you ever heard their gramaphone? I wonder what its like.

Which reminds me, did you hear the new Glenmachen record–a solo by the Russian base–Chaliapin⁸⁵ from ‘Robert Le Diable’.⁸⁶ The orchestration is absolutely magnificent and the singing as good. I only wish I could afford ‘the like of them’, don’t you?

I shan’t write again this term now–jolly glad it’s so near the end.

Yours

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 9):

[Gastons]

Moon Day.

A good codotta that.)

28 July 1915]

My dear Papy,

I was very glad to get both your letters, and sorry if I worried you at a busy moment. Willie’s absence must be a great discomfort, and of course I shall understand if letters are short or overdue just at present. No. A registered letter is no equivalent to ‘speaking sharply’ to one, and I am therefore in no need to the German gentleman’s remorse–or ‘again-bite’ to be Teutonic. But at sixteen we will do much for excitement, a new experience. ‘What’ said I to myself ‘tho’ the shades of Plato and Sophocles wait upon my pleasure, the treasures of Rome, the brilliance of France, the knowledge of Germany attend my nod? I am out of the world here. While the great war of all histories, nations and languages is waged hard by, shall I remain like a dormouse, inactive, apathetic. A thousand times no’, (as a friend of yours in Punch said on a memorable occasion), ‘I will have excitement I will taste of new experiences, soul-stirring adventures’–and gripping my hat with a cry of ‘D’audace et toujours d’audace’⁸⁷ I rushed out into the night and–sent a registered letter!

I don’t know that there is any news here: that Macmullen girl, the theatrical lady, is staying here just at present. The summer here is one of the worst Kirk remembers, being very wet and making a special point of raining whenever the poor people are trying to mow or make hay. Fortunately the amount of corn we grow at home is insignificant as regards the country’s needs. All the same, at a time like the present every little counts, and if this sort of thing is going on all over England it is rather a pity.

(Later on.) I have spent a ghastly evening being used as a lay figure by Miss Macmullen for bandages–as she is going to volunteer to something or other. I have been treated successively for a broken arm, a sprained ankle, and a wound in the head. This, with the adjoining complement of pins, small talk etc., is a good night’s work. I can now sympathise with your attitude towards the excellent game of ‘hair cut or shaved’. Ah well, I suppose half an hour’s codotta with some bits of lint is not a great sacrifice to the war. Still, I am really too exhausted to write any longer, and everyone is going to bed.

your loving

son Jack

Jack arrived in Belfast on 31 July and was there for the next eight weeks. Mr Kirkpatrick expected him to continue with some work, and he wrote to him on 17 August saying:

I suggest you should order…the following: Plato: The Phaedo, if you have not got it. Demosthenes: De Corona. Tacitus: The Annals. Aeschylus: The Agamemnon…I expect you are browsing at present on the pastures of general literature, and this of course is as it should be. If however you find English too easy and sigh for more worlds to conquer, I recommend the perusal of any German book you may happen to come across. (LP V: 12)

During this time Lewis added six more poems to his ‘Metrical Meditations of a Cod’, at least two of which are included in his Collected Poems.

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 128-9):

[Gastons 17?

September 1915]

My dear Papy,

After a week of mutual waiting for a letter, I suppose it is my duty to take up the pen. Things have been so developing here in various ways that I have not really had time to settle down. A wonderful thing has happened–yesterday I got a fellow pupil!⁸⁸ It is a nephew of Mrs. Howard Ferguson’s who is to come and read with Kirk for the paymaster’s department of the navy, and is about my own age. Of course it is just a bit of crumpled rose leaf to have this inroad, but as he will spend nearly all his time at Leatherhead taking special classes for chemistry and solid mathematics–whatever that name of terror may mean–one cannot complain. He seems a decent poor creature, though of course not wildly interesting. Mrs. Ferguson came down with him on Saturday and went away the same evening. I suppose you have met her? I thought she was exceedingly nice, and was interested to hear all the Lurgan and Banbridge gossip which Mrs. K’s questions called forth, until Kirk could stand it no longer and broke in with a fifteen minute lecture on the Budget.

The boy himself was at Campbell before he came here, and I can still remember enough to pick up acquaintance in common and to criticise ‘the old place’. I hear to my surprise that Joey⁸⁹ is a ‘knut’ cricketer in his House Eleven: one never hears these tit-bits at home.

It is a good deal warmer here than in Ireland and my cold is consequently getting better–you will be relieved to hear. Kirk is still going strong and Bookham is looking its prettiest. Any sign of the new overcoat yet? But of course it will not really be needed till much later in the year. Tell me too if you hear anything from W. I must now stop and go to bed, which I feel justified in doing because I am one up on you in the way of letters.

your loving

son Jack

P.S. Don’t forget to tell me when you write, how that cold of yours is. Jack.

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W/LP V: 21-2):

[Gastons

5 October 1915]

My dear Galahad,

I can’t really see why you have any more right to grouse at my not writing than I at you, but we will let it pass. And in the meantime, what do you think? It is a bit thick when one has fled from Malvern to shun one’s compeers in the seclusion of Surrey wilds, to be met by a damned fellow pupil of my own age–and sex!⁹⁰ Isn’t it the limit? Moreover he is a hopeless fellow with whom I despair of striking up any friendship that can be at all amusing–you know, the usual sort with absolutely no interest in any of the things that matter. Luckily, however he spends the greater part of his time taking special classes at Leatherhead, so that I still have my afternoon walk alone. Indeed, I suppose it is easier to put up with one philistine at Bookham than with five-hundred at Malvern, but still, the thing is a nuisance on which I had not counted.

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.⁹¹ 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.⁹² 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.⁹³ 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’)⁹⁴ ‘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’.⁹⁵ 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 Walker⁹⁶ 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 Ysaye⁹⁷ 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’⁹⁸ 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 historian⁹⁹ (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,¹⁰⁰ of Euripides of Catullus¹⁰¹ 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’.¹⁰² 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.¹⁰³

Kirk has just called my attention to an amusing article in the papers which I daresay you have read.¹⁰⁴ 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.¹⁰⁵

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?¹⁰⁶ 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?¹⁰⁷ 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,¹⁰⁸ 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’,¹⁰⁹ ‘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.¹¹⁰ He is less of a scholar than Newbolt,¹¹¹ 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’,¹¹² 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’.¹¹³ 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’,¹¹⁴ and Swinburne’s ‘Erectheus’ which is another tragedy on Greek lines like ‘Atalanta’,¹¹⁵ 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.¹¹⁶ 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’.¹¹⁷ 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.¹¹⁸ 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:¹¹⁹ 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’,¹²⁰ 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.¹²¹ It shares that rather deluding longevity with about half a dozen other nightmares such as ‘The village clock has just struck four’, ‘It was the schooner Hesperus’, ‘Under the spreading chestnut tree’¹²² etc.: to which list one might add the poems of Ovid, the novels of Dickens, and the complete works of Wordsworth.

Many thanks for the welcome postal order. Talking about money, when you next write to Warnie you might remind him of a business matter which seems to be rather hanging fire, and tell him that I am not only like Barkis, willing but also waiting.¹²³ I have acted upon your excellent advice and at last written to Arthur. There is, as yet, no answer, but in the meantime I am investing in a very good suit of sackcloth reach-me-downs and a dozen bottles of best quality ashes.

I am glad that you have been installed as a member of the permanent staff of St. Mark’s, and hope that ‘the management will continue to secure the services of this enterprising artist during the forthcoming season’ as the critics say in another department of life.¹²⁴ Yes: I am sure you will read the lesson as it has not been read in St. Mark’s for some time, although perhaps as you say, you appreciate it too well to do it justice.

I am rather sorry to hear that I have missed an opera company at all, even if a bad one. I suppose it is useless to ask if you have patronized it–unless perhaps you have been compelled to by Uncle Hamilton on the look out for a free stall.

Hoping the results of the accident are disappearing, I am

your loving,

son,

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 33-4):

[Gastons]

Postmark: 24 November 1915

My dear Papy,

I am sorry if my intentional silence on this subject in my last letter has proved, as it well might, rather provoking. You will readily understand however my motives for not wishing to take any unnecessary responsibility in so delicate a point. My position, like that of Gilbert’s policeman, ‘is not a happy one’.¹²⁵ While really anxious not to add in the least to your worries, at the same time I have no wish to do anything that Warnie would afterwards consider mean or unpleasant. Since however you ask my opinion, I reply that the new point of this being the last leave he is likely to get certainly makes a considerable difference from our point of view as well as from that of K. It is no business of mine to sit in judgement on Warnie’s actions, and from that it seems to me to be hard luck that he should not get a few days at home with us both before settling down to–an indefinite period. Of course, as you say, he may be exaggerating, but I can only go upon the information that we get.

You will understand I am sure that it is almost entirely for his sake that I should suggest such an arrangement. A few rather breathless days at home are not such a prize that I should make much exertion to secure them on my own account. In the absence of any authority from you I have judged it better not to make any mention of the matter to K. I hope this was right as I was not at all sure what I ought to do.

Believe me Papy I am very sorry indeed that we are all worrying you in this way. I have told you what I feel about it, but it remains really a question between you and him. I wish only to act, if possible, in a manner agreeable to you both, or failing that, to help you as far as I can and fall in with your wishes. I am not at all sure that I have said exactly what I wanted in this letter, or made my position perfectly clear. The post with your letter came in very late, just as I was going to bed, and I am writing this rather hastily. It cannot be posted till tomorrow morning (Wednesday). I hope your side is getting better, as also the teeth.

your loving

son Jack.

P.S. I need not of course point out to you that I should hardly like to have any of this letter quoted to Warnie–but of course you understand that. J.¹²⁶

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 36-7):

[Gastons]

Postmark: 4 December 1915

My dear Papy,

This has been a week of surprises. As Chaucer says,

‘One might a book make of it in a story’ ¹²⁷

On Thursday, having a faint suspicion that things wouldn’t pan out as we expected, like Dido ‘Omnia tuta timens’¹²⁸ I made no preparation beyond walking down to the station to meet what I judged a likely train (excuse the ‘ation’ jingle in that sentence). Today however, being convinced that Warnie would really turn up, I clothed myself in glad rags, packed my handbag and was just putting on my shoes preparatory to a second walk to the station when your telegram arrived. So we must expect him on Sunday week!

Kirk advised me to make an arrangement about meeting him in town, since it will be a Sunday and the trains therefore different, he might not find time to come down here between his arrival in London and the departure of the boat train. Entre nous I don’t think such a plan desirable–I hate meeting people in strange places, and especially W., as we always manage to bungle things in between us. Nor indeed should it be necessary: on the last occasion, as you will remember, he crossed on a Sunday and found no difficulty. Moreover, even if you wrote to arrange it with him as soon as you get this, your letter would scarcely reach him in time, and he would certainly have no time in which to reply. If you think otherwise, of course you will arrange accordingly and let me know.

It has rained steadily for several days now, and in spite of the unsettled conditions I have been reading a lot. I have now finished the first volume of the Faerie Queene and am going through an English Literature of Kirk’s by Andrew Lang.¹²⁹ Lang is always charming whatever he does–or ‘did’ as we must unfortunately say, and this book is very good. More a rambling record of personal tastes than a set handbook, but all the better for that reason. There has also been from the London Library a book called ‘Springs of Helicon’ by Mackail¹³⁰–you know, Professor of Poetry at Oxford and the man on Wm. Morris. This is a study on Chaucer, Spenser and Milton and I enjoyed it immensely. He has quite infected me with his enthusiasm for the former, whom I must begin to read. He talks of other works, ‘the legend of good women’, ‘Troilus and Cresseide’ as being better than the tales.¹³¹ It is from Troilus and Cresseide that he quotes that priceless line to which I treated you on the first page: I think it is rather great, don’t you?

There is also a ‘Greek Literature’ by Gilbert Murray,¹³² the bad verse-translator, which I have read with dire anger, as he degrades Homer from a poet into a ‘question’ and prefers that snivelling metaphysician Euripides to Aeschylus.

I suppose the great wedding is over by now? Or shall W. and I be let in for it? I hope you have not let the news of the coming visit trickle through to the ears of the sociable άγοραοι?¹³³ Thanks for the ‘crowns for convoy’, which I am sure will be quite sufficient.

your loving son,

Jack

Jack was home from 21 December 1915 until he returned to Great Bookham on 21 January 1916. Warnie was on leave from France, and Mr Lewis had both his sons home together.

1 Albert Lewis, like so many others, had for some months previously feared that England would be invaded by the Germans, and this explains why his son was not allowed to return to Great Bookham until 16 January 1915.

2 Mark 3:26: ‘If Satan rise up against himself, and be divided, he cannot stand, but hath an end.’

3 Homer, Iliad, Books I-XII, with an introduction, a brief Homeric grammar, and notes by D.B. Monro (1884).

4 Homer, Odyssey, Books I-XII, with an introduction, notes, etc. by W.W. Merry (1870).

5 Cornelius Tacitus (c. AD 55-117), the greatest historian of ancient Rome, in AD 98 published Agricola, a biography of his father-in-law, Julius Agricola.

6 Charlotte Brontë, Villette (1853).

7 Henry Seton Merriman, The Grey Lady (1895); With Edged Tools (1894).

8 Paul Emanuel and Mme Beck are characters in Villette.

9 There were, in fact, a good many German submarines operating in the Irish Sea at this time. Lewis’s father was particularly upset over the raid near Fleetwood on 30 January 1915 when the Germans sank the Kilcoan, a collier designed by his brother Joseph.

10 William Makepeace Thackeray, Henry Esmond (1852).

11 George Henty (1832-1902), while serving with the army in the Crimea, became a war correspondent. Following this career in many countries, he became successful as the author of stories for boys mainly based on military history Out in the Pampas (1868) was followed by some 35 other titles.

12 A family of Belgian refugees were evacuated to Great Bookham in the autumn of 1914. Lewis began visiting them with Mrs Kirkpatrick, and became infatuated with one of the young girls in the family He doubtless discussed his feelings for her with Arthur Greeves during the Christmas holidays. As to how much truth there was in what he wrote and said about the Belgian girl, see Lewis’s letter of 1 October 1931.

13 Rudyard Kipling, Kim (1901), The Jungle Book (1894); The Second Jungle Book (1895); Puck of Pook’s Hill (1906).

14 Albert Lewis had just acquired Kipling’s The Seven Seas (1896), which contains ‘The Story of Ung’.

15 Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (1590, 1596), Book IV, Canto xii, 1.

16 Helena, a play by the Greek poet Euripides, was produced in 412 BC.

17 Lewis is mocking his cousin Robert Heard Ewart.

18 Mr Kirkpatrick and Lord Balfour (1848-1930), were born in 1848, making them 67.

19 Algernon Charles Swinburne, A Study of Shakespeare (1880).

20 1 Samuel 16:23: ‘The evil spirit from God was upon Saul.’

21 Warren had only just returned from France, and having a week’s leave, he and Jack spent part of it together at home. Jack returned to Great Bookham on 9 February.

22 Presumably the Belgian girl he had written about in his previous letter.

23 Percy Bysshe Shelley, Adonais (1821), XLV, 397.

24 Lord Kitchener (1850-1916) was Secretary of State for War.

25 Walter Savage Landor, Pericles and Aspasia (1836-7).

26 Sir Walter Scott, Kenilworth (1821).

27 David Lloyd George (1863-1945), Minister of Munitions, gave a speech on 28 February in which he appealed for an end to labour disputes. ‘We laugh at things in Germany,’ he said, ‘that ought to terrify us. We say, “Look at the way they are making their bread–out of potatoes, ha, ha.” Aye, that potato bread spirit is something which is more to dread than to mock at. I fear that more than I do even von Hindenburg’s strategy, efficient as it may be. That is the spirit in which a country should meet a great emergency, and instead of mocking at it we ought to emulate it.’ The Times (1 March 1915), p. 10.

28 Algernon Charles Swinburne, Poems and Ballads, Second Series (1878). The poem entitled ‘A Forsaken Garden’ begins ‘In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland’.

29 Publius Vergili Maronis Aeneidos: Liber VII, edited by Arthur Sidgwick (1879); The Aeneid of Vergil: Book VIII, edited with notes and vocabulary by Arthur Sidgwick (1879).

30 Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1822).

31 i.e. the Belgian girl.

32 Lewis has borrowed the name from Malory. In Le Morte d’Arthur Galahad is the son of Launcelot and Elaine, and destined because of his immaculate purity to achieve the Holy Grail.

33 John Rutherford, The Bread of the Treshams (1903).

34 William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew (1623).

35 Richard Wagner’s opera Lohengrin was first performed in 1850.

36 The title Richard Warner had chosen for his opera was The Venusberg, but he changed it to Tannhäuser when he learned that certain wits were making a joke of it. The opera was first performed in 1845.

37 Franz Schubert’s Rosamund was first performed in 1823.

38 The ‘Fire Music’ is the Interlude to Act III, scene 3 of Richard Wagner’s opera Die Walküre, or The Valkyrie, first performed in 1870 and part of his Ring of the Nibelung cycle.

39 For information on music recorded on gramophone records see Francis F. Clough and G.J. Cuming, The World’s Encyclopaedia of Recorded Music (1952).

40 Arthur Clutton-Brock, William Morris: His Work and Influence (1914).

41 Jane (‘Janie’) Agnes McNeill (1889-1959) was the daughter of James Adams McNeill (1853-1907), headmaster of Campbell College 1890-1907, and Margaret Cunningham McNeill. Mr McNeill had at one time been Flora Lewis’s teacher, and he and his wife and daughter lived near the Lewises in ‘Lisnadene’, 191 Belmont Road, Strandtown. When he was young Jack Lewis both liked and disliked Janie. As time went on he realized that Jane, who would have liked to have gone to university, had remained home to look after her mother. He came to admire her much, and in time they became devoted friends. He was also close to Mrs McNeill, whose company he greatly enjoyed. That Hideous Strength is dedicated to Janie. See her biography in CG.

42 Charlotte Brontë, Shirley (1849); Jane Eyre (1847).

43 Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, an opera by Richard Wagner, was first performed in 1868.

44 Arthur did not seem entirely sure what this ‘Galloping Horse’ piece was. In Lewis’s next letter of 11 May, he said to Arthur, ‘Why didn’t you give me the number of the Polonaise: and what cheek to say “I think it is in A Flat”–when a journey downstairs would make sure.’ If he had looked carefully Arthur might have discovered that it was not one of Chopin’s Polonaises, but one of his Mazurkas.

45 William Morris, The Roots of the Mountains (1890). The Longman’s Pocket Library edition was published in two volumes in 1913.

46 Hans Christian Andersen, The Mermaid and Other Fairy Tales, translated by Mrs Edgar Lucas, with coloured illustrations by Maxwell Armfield, Everyman’s Library [1914].

47 Albert and his sons were delighted with the new rector of St Mark’s. This was the Reverend Arthur William Barton (1881-1962) who was born in Dublin and had gone, like Warnie and Jack, to Wynyard School. He took his BA from Trinity College, Dublin in 1903, and his BD in 1906. He was ordained in 1905 and was curate at St George’s, Dublin, from 1904 until 1905, and curate of Howth from 1905 to 1913. From 1912 to 1914 he was head of the university settlement at Trinity College Mission in Belfast. He was instituted as rector of St Mark’s, Dundela, on 6 April 1914, and remained there until 1925 when he became rector of Bangor. In 1927 he was made Archdeacon of Down, and in 1930 he became Bishop of Kilmore, Elphin and Ardagh. In 1939 Barton became Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland, which post he held until his retirement in 1956. In his description of Barton Warnie said, ‘There must have been few who met him and did not like him, and he was soon to become a constant and welcome visitor at Little Lea. He was a man of sunny temperament, with a great sense of fun, and a caressing voice; he brought into the rather narrow air of a Belfast suburb the breath of a wider culture and a more humane outlook; his society was refreshing. What was of more importance, he was an excellent and conscientious Priest, who found the religion of his parish sunk into mere formalism under the regime of his slothful predecessor, and who set on foot a renaissance’ (LP IV: 178).

48 Purdysburn was a lunatic asylum.

49 ‘But enough of these toys’, Francis Bacon said in ‘Of Masques and Triumphs’, Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral (1625).

50 Revelation 4:4-10.

51 Roots of the Mountains, op. cit, vol. I, ch. 3, pp. 24-5: ‘Therein are Kobbolds, and Wights that love not men, things unto whom the grief of men is as the sound of the fiddle-bow unto us. And there abide the ghosts of those that may not rest; and there wander the dwarfs and the mountain-dwellers, the dealers in marvels, the givers of gifts that destroy Houses.’

52 The painter and sculptor George Frederic Watts (1817-1904) who lived for some years at ‘Limneslease’ near Compton in Surrey

53 Presumably a reference to the notorious Victorian children’s lesson book Little Arthur’s England (1835) by Lady Calcott.

54 Several generations of the Greeves family had been members of the Society of Friends (Quakers). However, Arthur Greeves’s grandparents had been converts to the Plymouth Brethren and it was in this denomination that Arthur had been brought up. The family retained its connection to the Friends.

55 John Milton, Sonnet 16, ‘When I consider how my light is spent’ (1673): ‘They also serve who only stand and wait.’

56 The letters columns of the papers had been filled with talk of the pros and cons of conscription. However, the Military Service Act, which brought in conscription, did not come into being until 10 February 1916.

57 Roots of the Mountains, op cit, vol. I, ch. 1, p. 13.

58 Laxdaela Saga, translated by M.A.C. Press, Temple Classics (1899). This 13th century Icelandic saga is the tragic story of several generations of an Iceland family, and in particular of Gudrun who causes the death of a man she loves but fails to marry.

59 Jane Austen, Mansfield Park (1814).

60 He had in mind Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 1, first performed in 1851.

61 Charles Gordon Ewart (1885-1936) was the second son of Sir William Quartus Ewart. See The Ewart Family in the Biographical Appendix.

62 He means her character was like Wagner’s Die Walküre.

63 Gundreda Ewart (1888-1975) was one of the daughters of Sir William Quartus Ewart. See The Ewart Family in the Biographical Appendix.

64 From Edvard Grieg’s Lyriske Smaastykker (1867).

65 i.e. ‘A British Roman Song’.

66 He is referring to Plato’s Phaedrus, 278a

67 The Whip, a play by Cecil Raleigh and Henry Hamilton, had been performed for the first time in 1909 and was having a revival.

68 Willie Carr, Albert’s managing clerk, apparently after being rejected for the army on account of his teeth in the earlier days of the war, had now been accepted.

69 William Shakespeare, Othello, The Moor of Venice (1622).

70 These are the central characters in William Shakespeare’s plays King Lear (1608), Macbeth (1623), Hamlet (1603) and Othello.

71 This was Jack’s maternal grandmother, Mrs Mary Hamilton, then living at Archburn, Knock. See The Hamilton Family in the Biographical Appendix.

72 The Open Road, compiled by E.V. Lucas (1905).

73 Maurice Hewlett, Pan and the Young Shepherd (1898).

74 Maurice Hewlett, Lore of Proserpine (1913); Forest Lovers (1898).

75 Charlotte Brontë, The Professor (1857).

76 Genesis 3:19.

77 Demosthenes (383-322 BC) was a great Athenian orator and statesman, and Cicero (106-43 BC) a great Roman orator and statesman. Neither, however, attracted Lewis, who writing years later in SBJ IX said: ‘Kirk did not, of course, make me read nothing but Homer. The Two Great Bores (Demosthenes and Cicero) could not be avoided.’

78 Henry Seton Merriman, The Sowers (1896).

79 George Eliot (1819-80), the English novelist whose real name was Mary Ann Evans.

80 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Christabel and Other Poems (1816); The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798).

81 i.e. Lewis’s cousin, Mrs George Harding (née Charlotte Hope Ewart, 1882-1934).

82 Lewis loved all Richard Wagner’s music, especially the Ring of the Nibelung cycle comprising Das Rheingold (The Rhinegold) first performed in 1869; Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), first performed in 1870; Siegfried and Götterdämmerung (The Dusk of the Gods), both performed for the first time in 1876.

83 Parsifal, an opera by Wagner, first performed in 1882.

84 William Jaffé, a friend of Albert Lewis, was the son of Sir Otto Jaffé who was twice Lord Mayor of Belfast.

85 Chaliapin was Fyodor Ivanovich Shalyalpin (1873-1938) who was generally considered the greatest singer of his day

86 Robert le Diable, an opera by Giacomo Meyerbeer, was first performed in 1831.

87 ‘“Boldness and ever more boldness” from G. J. Danton in Le Moniteur (4 September 1792).’

88 The fellow pupil was Terence Forde (1899-?), the ward of Mrs Howard Ferguson. He had been brought up in Manchester, and after moving to Ireland he attended Campbell College, from which school he was sent to Mr Kirkpatrick.

89 This is Jack’s cousin, Joseph ‘Joey’ Tegart Lewis. See note 21 to letter of 27 November 1908. Joey entered Campbell College, Belfast, in 1906, and was still a pupil there. See The Lewis Family in the Biographical Appendix.

90 i.e. Terence Forde.

91 i.e. the opera by Charles Gounod.

92 The comparison is between Louis and Shirley, characters in Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley, and Gordon Ewart and Lily Greeves who were to be married on 14 December 1915.

93 Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, 2 vols., Everyman’s Library [1910].

94 Swinburne, Poems and Ballads, op. cit. ‘At Parting’ begins: ‘For a day and a night Love sang to us, played with us.’

95 The lines from ‘At a Month’s End’ are: ‘Who snares and tames with fear and danger/ A bright beast of a fiery kin.’

96 Dr Lawrence Walker of Belfast was a teacher of music.

97 Eugène Ysaÿe (1858-1931), the Belgian violinist and conductor whose style of playing was considered unconventional and highly original.

98 Madame Butterfly, an opera by Giacomo Puccini, was first performed in 1904.

99 Thucydides (c. 460-c. 400 BC) wrote a history of the Peloponnesian War which is one of the greatest historical works of all time. One of its most noteworthy passages is Pericles’s Funeral Oration over the Athenians who had died in the war.

100 Sappho (b. c. mid-7th cent. BC), a poetess born in Lesbos. Only 12 of her poems have survived.

101 Gaius Valerius Catullus (c. 84-c. 54 BC), one of the most versatile of Roman poets, who wrote love poems, elegies and satirical epigrams with equal success.

102 Jack London, The Jacket (1915).

103 This is from the essay by Francis Bacon referred to in the letter of 13 May 1915. Bacon was the Baron of Verulam.

104 See The Times (21 October 1915), p. 4 and (22 October 1915), p. 5.

105 ‘Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceedingly small.’ Friedrich von Logau, Sinnegedichte (1654), ‘Desz Dritten Tausend, Andres Hundert’ no. 24 (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow).

106 William H.F. ‘Bill’ Patterson, the son of William Hugh Patterson (1835-1918) who wrote A Glossary of Words in Use in the Counties of Antrim and Down (1880), was addicted to puns and was a recognized Strandtown wit. He published a volume of verse under the initials W.H.F., Songs of a Port (Belfast, 1920).

107 Included in The Times of 3 November 1915 was The Times Recruiting Supplement, on page 16 of which was a poem Rudyard Kipling composed for the occasion. The first verse of the poem, ‘For All We Have and Are’, is as follows:

For all we have and are,

For all our children’s fate,

Stand up and meet the war,

The Hun is at the gate!

Our world has passed away

In wantonness o’erthrown.

There is nothing left today

But steel and fire and stone.

108 Rudyard Kipling, Barrack-Room Ballads and Other Verses (1892).

109 ‘The Brushwood Boy’ is one of the stories in Kipling’s The Day’s Work (1908).

110 The ‘dedication piece’ which refers to ‘my brother’s spirit’ and ‘gentlemen unafraid’ is the dedication poem to Wolcott Balestier in Barrack-Room Ballads; ‘The Last Rhyme of True Thomas’, ‘The First Chantey’ and ‘The Last Chantey’ are found in The Seven Seas.

111 Sir Henry John Newbolt (1862-1938) was educated at Clifton College and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He is remembered particularly for his nautical ballads published in Admirals All and Other Verses (1897).

112 Thomas Love Peacock, Headlong Hall (1816).

113 William Shakespeare, Sonnet 17 (1609).

114 Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea (1883-6).

115 Algernon Charles Swinburne, Erechtheus (1876); Atalanta in Calydon (1865).

116 The Battle of Mons, on the Western Front, began on 23 August 1914. For the whole of that day the British held the line against the Germans with greatly inferior numbers. A legend began within two weeks of the battle that an angel had appeared ‘on the traditional white horse and clad all in white with flaming sword’. Facing the advancing Germans the angel ‘forbade their further progress’. Martin Gilbert, First World War (1994), p. 58.

117 ‘Killed in Action’ by R.C.L. is found in Punch, Vol. CXLIX (13 November 1915), p. 310.

118 Horace, Epistles, 2. 2. 17-19.

119 This is Théo Ysaÿe (1865-1918), a pianist and composer, brother of Eugène.

120 ‘Auf den Bergen’ is a piano solo from Edvard Grieg’s Folkelivsbilleder (1872).

121 George Gordon, Lord Byron, The Destruction of Sennacherib (1815), l. 1: ‘The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold’.

122 ‘It was the schooner Hesperus’ is l. 1 of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Wreck of the Hesperus (1839); ‘Under the spreading chestnut tree’ is l.1 of Longfellow’s The Village Blacksmith (1839).

123 Barkis is the character in Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield (1849-50) who sent a message by David to Clara Peggotty that ‘Barkis is willin’.’

124 Albert had been appointed a church warden at St Mark’s for the third time.

125 W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, The Pirates of Penzance (1879), Act II.

126 Albert replied on 26 November 1915: ‘I was glad to get your kind and sympathetic letter. I have done as you would wish. I have just written to Warnie to say that inasmuch as he says he will not get leave again until the end of the war, I have altered my decision and have written to you to hold yourself in readiness to leave when he calls. I shall write to K. and send your travelling money later. You may tell K. what is impending if you like’ (LP V: 34).

127 Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde, bk. V, l. 585: ‘Men mighte a book make of it, lik a storie!’

128 Virgil, Aeneid, IV, 298: ‘Incline to fear where all was safe…’

129 Andrew Lang, History of English Literature (1912).

130 John William Mackail, Springs of Helicon: A Study in the Progress of English Poetry from Chaucer to Milton (1909); The Life of William Morris, 2 vols. (1899).

131 i.e. Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women and Troilus and Criseyde are better than his most popular work, The Canterbury Tales (composed 1387-1400).

132 Gilbert Murray, A History of Ancient Greek Literature (1897). Murray (1866-1957) was Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford 1908-36, and a distinguished translator of Greek plays.

133 People who frequent the agora (market place), i.e. the common people.