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I was very much interested in your description of those lakes, tho’ I must say that considering my eager desire to see them, both this year and last, it was particularly kind of you to go just after I had left–but not a word of that to the others. I can quite imagine how fine it must have been–rather like the ‘Star Bath’¹⁴² as I picture them. The mist’s gradual creeping up would have been great. After all, mountain scenery is in some ways the best, isn’t it–excepting our own hills with their exquisite little corners of such homely and ‘intime’ beauty, which are in a different class. How I do wish I could still be with you during the next fortnight! You must let me know whatever you do, and tell me all the funny or exciting ‘adventures’ that turn up, and I won’t feel quite out of it.

To go back to books: I found my Milton Vol. II waiting at Mullans and am very pleased with it, except that the yellow wrapper is in bad condition and can’t be worn when it is on its shelf. I have also bought a 7d. Macmillan book by Algernon Blackwood called ‘Jimbo, a fantasy’.¹⁴³ Although you have never mentioned it, I dare say you know that there is such a book–I never heard of it myself. I am keeping it to read in the train when I go back (Friday night), but I have to restrain myself every moment–it looks so awfully appetizing. If it turns out to be good, of course I will let you know. What are you reading? Try Phrynette¹⁴⁴ if you can’t get anything else. I am still at The Newcomes and the Faerie Queene, reserving the Milton for next term, while in the mornings in bed I am going over ‘Sense and Sensibility’ again–which I had nearly forgotten. Do you remember Mrs Jennings and Marianne Dashwood and the rest?

On Sunday night my father and I had supper at Glenmachan, whither came the Hamiltons from Knock. K.[elsie] has a scheme for going down with them and me to Larne for a day, which I hope will come off, as I am very dull, and lonely and fed up–indeed I shall not be sorry to leave home.

I needn’t apologize for giving you no instalment this week, as you are in the same state, but I will try and do better next time. This letter is perhaps a bit short, but so is yours–we have neither of us yet got our sea legs. Let me hear from you by Tuesday at the very latest, a good long one, as I need a lot of cheering up. Good bye old man,

Yours,

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 125):

[Gastons]

27/9/16.

My dear Papy,

I hope you got the telegram all right this time: at least it was sent on Saturday afternoon. I had a very tolerable journey, and I think my cold is gone. How is yours? Kirk is very pleased with the Trinity papers and we find them very useful: most of them of course are rather harder than those I shall have, as a Trinity Scholarship is not an entrance scholarship at all, but is taken when you have been ‘up’ for a year–at least so I am assured. But of course the greater includes the less, and if we master these the other will be all the safer. I am sending back some of the German books which he thinks unsuitable, but we have enough for the present.

Thanks for the letter from Arthur which you forwarded. When he wrote, ‘the gaiety of nations’¹⁴⁵ had been increased by Gordon’s developing a bad knee which prevented him from walking! On the whole it must have been a cheery little party after my leaving them–tho’ that in itself was perhaps enough to depress any holiday-makers. But of course you will never hint for a moment to anyone that I had anything but panegyrics to say about Portsalon. These people are all so throughother [sic] that you never know who will hear what, as Mrs. K. would say.

Everyone here says that they heard the last London raid, though I ingloriously slept all night. With that exception, everything in the war way seems to be going well, doesn’t it? It is hot summer weather here without the least suggestion of autumn, which I dislike very much. Kirk is in very good form, although he does not remember M. Henry. About the Westminster confession I have not yet asked.

The collars which Annie was to send me have arrived. I don’t know exactly how postage rates are running, but I hope you didn’t sell the gramophone or your new picture to raise it. Some day when you have a lot of money and time to spare, I might ask you to send me three catalogues–Macmillan’s, Dent’s and a French one, which you will find on the table farthest from the window, on the microscope box, in the little end room. Of course at present, ruined as you are by these freights of cellar linen, I shouldn’t dare!

your loving

son Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (LP V: 123-4):

[Gastons]

27th./9/16.

My dear Galahad,

I think you must be going dotty with all your talk about when I’m going back, seeing that I said in my first letter that Friday (last) was already fixed. At any rate you must have found out by now, and will understand why I am late in answering your letter, which only reached me today. As you say, it seems years and years since I left: I have quite dropped back into the not unpleasant, though monotonous routine of Bookham, and could almost believe that I had never left it. Portsalon is like a dream. I heartily agree with you that it must have been nice to have the Lounge all to yourselves.

Now to books: I told you didn’t I that I had bought Blackwood’s Jimbo did I not? I finished it on Sunday and am awfully bucked with it–a very good 7d. worth. It is quite in Blackwood’s best manner, and you will specially love the last thirty pages or so–they are terrific. Get it at once. I hope you are not praising ‘Letters from Hell’ out of politeness, for I really want to know what it is like. I saw it once in a second hand bookshop at Guildford nearly a year ago: looking over the first few pages I thought it excellent, but of course it may not be so good later on. How many books seem to promise such a lot at the start and then turn out disappointing. Whereas good, stodgy books like Scott have all their interesting parts in the middle and begin with reams of dry-as-dust. Talking about stodge, I finished ‘The Newcomes’ before leaving home, and certainly enjoyed the end better than any parts except the scenes at Baden. Of course it is a great novel, but I am very thankful to have got it off my chest. I should advise you to get the 2/6 volume containing Milton’s minor poems,¹⁴⁶ which I am now reading: I am sure they are better to begin on than P.L. I am now at ‘Comus’, which is an absolute dream of delight. I am sure you would love it: it is like a play written on an episode from the Faerie Queene, all magic and distressed ladies and haunted woods. It is lovely in books the way you can just turn from one sort of beauty to another and never get tired.

I was sorry to find no instalment in your last letter, tho’ of course if you have completely lost interest in poor Papillon it is no good forcing yourself. I will consent to your trying a novel only on the condition that it be sent to me, chapter by chapter. I too am wondering whether I should not chuck Bleheris and start something else: partly I have so many ideas and also I think the old fashioned English is a fatal mistake. Any good things that are in it or would be later on, can be worked in elsewhere. In a way it is disheartening to remember how keenly we were both starting out on our tales this time last term and see the result. But still we have both much experience and practice gained, and we got a lot of pleasure out of them while they lasted: the danger is that we get to turn too easily from one thing to another and never get anything done.

I didn’t go to see anything in London, I really don’t know why–I was a bit tired, nothing seemed to attract me much, and also, having started ‘Jimbo’ in the train, was eager to get to it again. One part of my journey I enjoyed very much was the first few miles out of Liverpool: because it was one of the most wonderful mornings I have ever seen–one of those lovely white misty ones when you can’t see 10 yards. You could just see the nearest trees and houses, a little ghostly in appearance, and beyond that everything was a clean white blank. It felt as if the train was alone in space, if you know what I mean.

I think you are very wise not to take that puppy from K[elso Ewart]. Unless you are a person with plenty of spare time and real knowledge, it is a mistake to keep dogs–and cruel to them. Have you got the Kaleva yet, tell me when you do and what you think of it. I wonder where you are at this moment? Have you reached home yet? Tell me all the news when you write, what you’re reading etc. and whether you are going back to your taskmaster Tom at once.¹⁴⁷ I am not nearly so fed up now as I was, and hope you are the same. The country at home was beginning to look nice and autumn-y, with dead leaves in the lanes and a nice nutty smell (you know what I mean) so I suppose it is getting better still. Here it is horrible bright summer which I hate. Love to all our friends such as the hedgepig etc.

Yours,

Jack.

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

[Gastons]

Oct. Ugh! 10/4/16!! [4 October 1916]

My dear Arthur,

I believe it is Lamb who says somewhere that he does not know whether it is more delightful to set out for a holiday or return from one: perhaps you hardly agree with him! Though I am sure he hated his office (read ‘The Superannuated Man’)¹⁴⁸ quite as much as you do. But of course he means, I suppose, the getting back to home, to ones books etc and not to work. However I suppose you are gradually getting ‘broken in’.

The beastly summer is at last over here, and good old Autumn colours & smells and temperatures have come back. Thanks to this we had a most glorious walk on Saturday: it was a fine cool, windy day & we set out after lunch to go to a place called ‘Friday Street’ which is a very long walk from here through beautiful woods and vallies that I don’t know well.¹⁴⁹ After several hours wandering over fields & woods etc. with the aid of a map we began to get lost and suddenly at about 4 o’clock–we had expected to reach the place by that time–we found ourselves in a place where we had been an hour before! You will understand that while the others were only annoyed at this, I felt je ne sais quoi de dreamlike and terrifying sensation at the idea of wandering round in circles through these big, solemn woods; also there was a certain tinge of ‘Alice-in-W-ism’ about it. We had a lot of difficulty in at last reaching the place, but it was glorious when we got there. You are walking in the middle of a wood when all of a sudden you go downwards and come to a little open hollow just big enough for a little lake and some old, old red-tiled houses: all round it the trees tower up on rising ground and every road from it is at once swallowed up in them. You might walk within a few feet of it & suspect nothing unless you saw the smoke rising up from some cottage chimney. Can you imagine what it was like? Best of all, we came down to the little inn of the village and had tea there with–glory of glories–an old tame jackdaw hopping about our feet and asking for crumbs. He is called Jack and will answer to his name.

The inn has three tiny but spotlessly clean bedrooms, so some day,–if the gods will, you & I are going to stay there. The inn is called the ‘Stephen Langton’ and dates from the time of that gentleman’s wars against the king or the barons or somebody (you’ll know I expect),¹⁵⁰ tho’ of course it has been rebuilt since. I don’t like playing the guide-book, but it was so ravishing that I had to tell you. We were so late getting there that it was dark soon after we left, and often going astray we didn’t get home till ten o’clock–dead beat but happy.

Partly because the country we saw that day was so like it I have been reading again the second volume of Malory, especially the part of the ‘Sangreal’ which I had forgotten. With all its faults, in small doses this book is tip-top: those mystic parts are very good to read late at night when you are drowsy and tired and get into a sort of ‘exalted’ mood. Do you know what I mean? You so often share feelings of mine which I can’t explain that I hope you do: mention this subject when you next write. Besides this I have finished ‘Comus’ with great enjoyment: I have also re-read for the thousandth time ‘Rapunzel’ and some other favourite bits of Morris, while through the week I have read an excellent novel of Vachell’s ‘The Paladin’¹⁵¹ which you have probably read too and also dipped often into Boswell’s ‘Life of Johnson’.¹⁵² Being entirely made up of conversation I don’t think it is a book to be read continuously, tho’ it is very good fun in bits: you are thinking of getting it I believe. I agree with you that I must read some more books in the particular ‘genre’ of ‘Our Village’ etc, but there are so many things to read that I don’t know where to begin. I forget what edition you are getting of the ‘Scenes of Clerical life’¹⁵³

As to the fate of sad Papillon, I will look at the exact place of leaving-off when I go upstairs & write it down somewhere in pencil: unless you decide to go on with it don’t waste time & energy copying the rest but send me instead the first drafts of your new work. I should be glad, though, to see you going on with it and have the complete tale, for there is good stuff in it: however, I can’t preach in this respect now! Loki & Dennis & Bleheris, all our operas, plays etc go one way; perhaps they are caught like Wan Jadis in the Grey Marish on the way to the country of the past!¹⁵⁴ For my part I am at present engaged in making huge plans both for prose and verse none of which I shall try. I begin to see that short, slight stories & poems are all I am fit for at present & that it would be better to write & finish one of such than to begin & leave twenty ambitious epic-poems or romances. I wait eagerly either for another instalment of the Watersprite or else some new venture from you: you shall have the first thing I do, if I ever do anything.

How I wish I had been with you at Mr Thompson’s.¹⁵⁵ Everything seems to have happened well after my departure–I suppose you say no wonder! what a female-minded person I am getting! I would cross out that remark as peevish & ‘cattish’, but it would make a mess and you would only wonder what was underneath. Take it as unsaid.

Have you got or begun the ‘Kalevala’ yet? Give me your first impressions when you do. Papillon has got to where they are both under the water and ends with the words ‘it shot him much farther than he had intended so that he nearly lost sight of the fairy’. Looking at it revives my enthusiasm. Do go on with it if you can: certainly send me the rest provided this doesn’t interfere with any new work. Now good night Galahad the ‘haut prince’ as Malory [would] say,

Yours

Jack

P.S. Poor puppy!! What a life it’ll have! I shall poison it in kindness when I come home!

P.P.S. Why do your letters never come till Wednesday now?

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 129-30):

[Gastons]

10/6/16 [6 October 1916]

My dear Papy,

Many thanks for the catalogues, which were necessary to my peace of mind. I shouldn’t try the ‘conceit’ if I were you, as two can play at that game, and you might get a number of strange parcels.

Since I last wrote, that awe-inspiring person the Tutor for Entrances of Balliol has deigned to forward us last year’s scholarship papers for that college–although we are I think quite determined now on the big group. He distinguished himself by doing the very thing that we have so often discussed–addressing his envelope to the ‘Rev. T.W. Kirkpatrick’, thinking I suppose that no one except a clergyman could possibly be entrusted with the youth of a nation. The papers themselves were pretty much what we expected, and not discouraging. The subject for an English essay–with no alternative–was ‘Diplomacy’ which is rather a mouthful. It would involve a good deal of history. Kirk has been growing very enthusiastic on the superior composition of these papers to the Trinity ones, which indeed were rather unintelligently drawn up. Some of the pieces in the scholarship exams are desperately hard, while others in the Fellowship ones are ridiculously easy: of course it is the competition and the standard required which really makes the difference. I agree with you that a ‘course’ would be much worse than this scheme: for while it is true that a man can always learn a course, another can always learn it better.

I am reading at present a book whose scene is laid in Oxford and which tells one a good deal about the University (not Tom Brown),¹⁵⁶ ‘Lady Connie’ by Mrs. Humphrey Ward.¹⁵⁷ She is a favourite of yours, is she not? I have never read her until now, and she seems to have many points. She is rather a pedant tho’, insists too much on her ‘culture’, and tells us a great deal about tanagra Statues, Titainesque effects, discoveries in Crete, Euripides, Goethe, etc., etc. You know what I mean.

We have yet another pupil here now–a boy who comes every morning to do Spanish. He is reading for the Foreign Office. It seems a lovely language, and so easy that I can imagine ‘even Warnie’ taking to it. I wish I could prevent Arthur’s invasions, but don’t know quite how to do it.

your loving

son Jack.

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

[Gastons]

(The 12th. Oct., I think) [1916]

My dear Arthur,

It was unfortunate that I should choose a word like ‘exaltation’ which is so often used in connection with religion and so give you a wrong impression of my meaning. I will try to explain again: have you ever sat over the fire late, late at night when you are very drowzy & muddle headed, and it is no use trying to go on with your book? Everything seems like a dream, you are absolutely contented, and ‘out of the world’. Anything seems possible, and all sorts of queer ideas float through your mind & sort of vaguely thrill you but only mildly & calmly. It is in this sort of mood that the quaint, old mystical parts of Malory are exactly suitable: you can read a chapter or two in a sort of dream & find the forests of ‘Logres & of Lyonesse’ very agreeable at such a time–at least I do.

As to the other question about religion, I was sad to read your letter. You ask me my religious views: you know, I think, that I beleive in no religion. There is absolutely no proof for any of them, and from a philosophical standpoint Christianity is not even the best. All religions, that is, all mythologies to give them their proper name are merely man’s own invention–Christ as much as Loki. Primitive man found himself surrounded by all sorts of terrible things he didn’t understand–thunder, pestilence, snakes etc: what more natural than to suppose that these were animated by evil spirits trying to torture him. These he kept off by cringing to them, singing songs and making sacrifices etc. Gradually from being mere nature-spirits these supposed being[s] were elevated into more elaborate ideas, such as the old gods: and when man became more refined he pretended that these spirits were good as well as powerful.

Thus religion, that is to say mythology grew up. Often, too, great men were regarded as gods after their death–such as Heracles or Odin: thus after the death of a Hebrew philosopher Yeshua (whose name we have corrupted into Jesus) he became regarded as a god, a cult sprang up, which was afterwards connected with the ancient Hebrew Jahwehworship, and so Christianity came into being–one mythology among many, but the one that we happen to have been brought up in.

Now all this you must have heard before: it is the recognised scientific account of the growth of religions. Superstition of course in every age has held the common people, but in every age the educated and thinking ones have stood outside it, though usually outwardly conceding to it for convenience. I had thought that you were gradually being emancipated from the old beliefs, but if this is not so, I hope we are too sensible to quarrel about abstract ideas. I must only add that ones views on religious subjects don’t make any difference in morals, of course. A good member of society must of course try to be honest, chaste, truthful, kindly etc: these are things we owe to our own manhood & dignity and not to any imagined god or gods.

Of course, mind you, I am not laying down as a certainty that there is nothing outside the material world: considering the discoveries that are always being made, this would be foolish. Anything MAY exist: but until we know that it does, we can’t make any assumptions. The universe is an absolute mystery: man has made many guesses at it, but the answer is yet to seek. Whenever any new light can be got as to such matters, I will be glad to welcome it. In the meantime I am not going to go back to the bondage of believing in any old (& already decaying) superstition.

See! I have wasted ¾ of my letter on all these dry bones. However, old man, you started the subject and I had to have my turn. Yes, I wish you had really been with me on the walk to Friday-Street: how you and I, alone, would have gloried in those woods and vallies! But some day we will go and spend a week there at the inn, get up at 5 every morning & go to bed at 8, spending the interval sitting by the lake and talking to the Jackdaw. He can only say ‘Caw’ so that will be a nice change after my torrents of conversation!

I have written up for ‘Letters from Hell’ and it ought to be here by the end of the week. I am looking forward to it immensely and will enjoy being able to talk it over with you. You ask me what ‘special’ book I am reading at present: you must remember that I read seriously only on week-ends. When I last wrote my week-end books were ‘Comus’ and the Morte Darthur; last week-end, ‘Comus’ being finished, its place was taken by Shelley’s ‘Prometheus Unbound’¹⁵⁸ which I got half through. It is an amazing work. I don’t know how to describe it to you; it is more wild & out of the world than any poem I ever read, and contains some wonderful descriptions. Shelley had a great genius, but his carelessness about rhymes, metre, choice of words etc, just prevents him being as good as he might be. To me, when you’re in the middle of a fine passage and come to a ‘cockney’ rhyme like ‘ruin & ‘pursuing’, it spoils the whole thing–makes it vulgar and grotesque. However some parts are so splendid that I could forgive him anything. I am now, through the week, reading Scott’s ‘Antiquary’.¹⁵⁹ I suppose you have read it long ago: I am very pleased with it, especially the character of the Antiquary himself, the description of his room, and the old beggar. Tell me your views when you write–it is nice gradually to get more & more into each other’s style of reading, is it not–you with poetry and I with classical novels?

As to Bleheris, he is dead and I shan’t trouble his grave.¹⁶⁰ I will try and write something new soon–a short tale, I expect–but am rather taken up with verse at present, in my spare-time; which gets less and less as the exam. draws nearer. However I look eagerly for the first chapter of your novel, or failing that, the next leaf of Dennis.

It is an amazing thing to call the ‘Kalevala’ tame: whatever else it is, it is not tame. If a poem all about floods & primeval spirits and magic and talking beasts & monsters is not wild enough, I really don’t know what to say! However, chacun à son gout! As to the Milton I daren’t advise you–both volumes are so good, if you care for him. You don’t give any criticism on ‘Evelina’;¹⁶¹ do so, when you write.

It is a lovely moonlight night (a brau’ brich’ minlich’ nicht, do you remember). I wish you were here. Goodnight

J.

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 132):

[Gastons]

12th October 1916

My dear Papy,

We have all been plunged in misery here for the last week because no one can remember the context or the author of a quotation that we all know as well as our own names. It started by Mrs. K. seeing it in the ‘In Memoriam’ part of the paper and asking casually what it was from: since then we have ransacked our memories and books of reference in vain. You will laugh us to scorn when I tell you that it is the familiar,

‘E’en as he trod that day to God So walked he from his birth, In simpleness and gentleness And honour and clean mirth.’¹⁶²

but I am dashed if I can remember where it comes from. Some time I am sure it is Kipling, and again in other moods it seems impossible. Try and enlighten us.

You are rather too severe on the ‘Diplomacy’ essay: it is not–in my poor conceit–that the subject is not bounded enough, but that it is too bounded. It hems the candidate down to a field of historical and even technical knowledge that they have no right to expect of him. Now an essay on ‘air’ in a scientific exam would be very proper, and even an essay on virtue would have no vice about it. You may produce that ‘mot’ as one of your own when you next meet Bill Patterson ‘that sprightly caliph’ on the top of his tramcar. Before leaving the subject of exams, I must remark that the Oxford papers do not include one on ‘accidents’ which is a relief: tho’ of course if I am going to break down in that way, I shall have plenty of opportunities in the composition.

I am sorry to hear of your being laid up, and even Arthur’s assurance that he is ‘going to call on my father some time soon’ does not quite make up for it. If the weather at home is the same medley that we have here, I am not surprised. It is alternately hot, damp and warm, or cold and windy. I wish we could settle down to good winter weather and habits.

I have finished ‘Lady Connie’ and though it does not end as well as it begins, it was good enough to make me determine to read some more of hers next holidays. Since then I have been dipping into Boswell, whom I grow to like better and better.

Thanks for the enclosure which was a letter from my old Malvern study companion, who is in some mysterious affair called the ‘Artist’s Rifle.’ Did you ever hear of it? I confess I don’t know what claim Hardman has to be an artist.

Hoping you are quite set up again by now,

I am,

your loving

son Jack.

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

[Gastons]

(Forgotten the date) [18 October 1916]

My dear Arthur,

Frequently in arguing with you by letter I have had to ask you to read what I say carefully before you rush on to answer it. I distinctly said that there was once a Hebrew called Yeshua, I think on p. 2 (II!!) of my letter: when I say ‘Christ’ of course I mean the mythological being into whom he was afterwards converted by popular imagination, and I am thinking of the legends about his magic performances and resurrection etc. That the man Yeshua or Jesus did actually exist, is as certain as that the Buddha did actually exist: Tacitus mentions his execution in the Annals.¹⁶³ But all the other tomfoolery about virgin birth, magic healings, apparitions and so forth is on exactly the same footing as any other mythology. After all even your namesake king Arthur really lived once (if we are to believe the latest theories) but it doesn’t follow that Malory’s old book is history. In the same way there was such a person as Alexander the Great, but the adventures which the Middle Ages related of him are nonsense. It is generally thought, too, that there was such a man as Odin, who was deified after his death: so you see most legends have a kernel of fact in them somewhere. Indeed, these distinctions are so very obvious, that if you were not my best friend I should almost suspect you of wilfully misunderstanding me through temper.

Later on you ask me why I am sad, and suggest that it is because I have no hope of a ‘happy life hereafter’. No; strange as it may appear I am quite content to live without beleiving in a bogey who is prepared to torture me forever and ever if I should fail in coming up to an almost impossible ideal (which is a part of the Christian mythology, however much you try to explain it away). In fact I should think it horrible to feel that if life got too bad, I daren’t escape for fear of a spirit more cruel and barbarous than any man. Then you are good enough to ask me why I don’t kill myself. Because–as I have said to you before–in spite of occasional fits of depression I am very well pleased with life and have a very happy time on the whole. The only reason I was sad was because I was dissapointed in my hope that you were gradually escaping from beleifs which, in my case, always considerably lessened my happiness: if, however, it has the opposite effect on you, tant mieux pour vous! As to the immortality of the soul, though it is a fascinating theme for day-dreaming, I neither beleive nor disbeleive: I simply don’t know anything at all, there is no evidence either way. Now let us take off our armour, hang up our swords and talk about things where there is no danger of coming to blows!

Yes, I quite agree that the metre of the Kalevala is tedious & the word ‘tame’ exactly describes it. It doesn’t sort of rise to the subject at all, but is always the same whatever is happening. If you give this up–and there is no point in going on unless it takes your fancy–don’t let it quench your rising taste for poetry. I must really fulfill my long standing purpose and settle down to some more books of the ‘Cranford’¹⁶⁴ type: your description has made me quite enthusiastic, so without fail tell me the edition you have got it & all your Austens etc in? I finished ‘The Antiquary’ this afternoon, and it thoroughly denies our old wheeze about most books getting tiresome halfway through. It gets better and better as it goes on, and I have not enjoyed anything so much for a long time. I believe I shall soon become almost as devoted to Scott as you are: I begin to feel that sort of ‘repose’, which you like, in turning to him. Which of his should I try next? I shall be glad to hear your views on ‘Lavengro’¹⁶⁵ when you have read it, also by whom this mysterious 1/-edition is published.

And now I must turn to ‘Letters of Hell’. I suppose I must have looked forward to it too much: at any rate–I will tell the truth–I have failed to read it, have not enjoyed it a bit and have put it away in my drawer unfinished. There! Am I fallen in your eyes forever? I don’t really know why I disliked it so much, because I could see all the time that there was good in it if only I could appreciate it–which makes it all the more annoying. For one thing I expected beauties of the phantastic type, and in reality it turns out only a novel. For the parts about Hell are after all only a setting for the story of his previous life–a story which seemed to me so far as I read it supremely commonplace. The characters are all absolutely crude–wicked rich men of the melodramatic type and miraculously innocent angels of heroines. The only part I liked was the vision of paradise, which struck me as good. Still, when both you and Macdonald praise the book, I am ready to beleive that the fault must be in me and not in it.

Thanks for the instalment: as the post only came in at 9 o’clock I can’t read it yet or I won’t get my letter to you done till bedtime–but you shall have my verdict (‘impudence’ say you) next week. Do either go on with this tale or start something new: I am trying to make out the plan of a short tale but nothing ‘comes’. That is an awful waste, that book W[arnie] gave my father: wouldn’t you love an edition with that binding and paper, only the size of my Kipling, say of the Brontës or James Stephens or Macdonald? Talking about Kipling it is time you began him: try ‘Rewards & Fairies’¹⁶⁶ and if the first story in it ‘Cold Iron’ doesn’t knock you head over heels, I don’t know what will. Good night, they’re all gone up, and I have tired you by now ‘I do talk so.’

Jack

P.S. (In the bedroom) It is much more wintry to night, and when I came up the curtains were not drawn and the room was full of moonlight, bright bright as anything. It is too cold to sit looking at the glorious night but it is beautiful! I shake your hand. Goodnight. I wish you could come & ‘grind’ at Gastons. Ugh. Horrible cold sheets now

J.

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 133-4):

[Gastons]

19/Oct./16.

My dear Papy,

Yes! That was a bad lapse of memory, and now that the mystery is solved, I wonder how I could possibly have forgotten it. Perhaps the fact of its being printed as 3 lines (the ‘God’ and ‘trod’ rhymes having lines to themselves) had something to do with it. Still, it was a nasty blunder, and I thought I knew my Kipling better than that. Like all quotations from good authors, it is much finer in its setting than when we read it alone: that whole poem ought to settle for good and all K’s question as to whether Kipling be a poet.¹⁶⁷ He could be ‘spoken to’ as poor Uncle Bill was on a similar occasion.

Many thanks for the ‘Spectator’ which I shall certainly keep for the sake of the poem. It is, I quite agree with you, a really notable piece of work, quite above the average. The verse beginning ‘Life?–’Twas a little thing to give’ is glorious, and also the last two lines

‘Who bartered for Youth’s diadem

The dross of after years.’¹⁶⁸

I wonder is there any country outside these islands where about every 10th man is a poet, as seems to be the case with us? I wish somebody of real taste would collect all the verse that is appearing in the papers at present and make a selection–it would be the best anthology ever published. As to F.S. Boas I know him well from a book of his on Shakespeare¹⁶⁹ that Kirk has, but it never struck me that there was any relationship. Perhaps it was he who ‘lectured on Herrick’? The nephew I don’t remember, though he must have been at Campbell in my time.

The other article has a lot of sense in it: the writer must be like K’s friend, of whom I told you, who could give anyone points in classical literature without knowing Latin or Greek. That Butcher and Lang translation of Homer¹⁷⁰ is very good, and so is Bacon’s bit of Lucretius, tho’ not as beautiful as his own suggestion that ‘it be with pity’. Of course I suppose only the very greatest poetry will stand translation: fancy a French prose version of Swinburne.

I am at present reading a book which you would enjoy, ‘The letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple’.¹⁷¹ In case you have forgotten who they were, you can turn to Macaulay’s essay on the latter.¹⁷² They lived in Cromwell’s time, and the letters are very quaint. In the notes the editor also quotes an account of the ‘remove these baubles’ scene by an eye-witness, who was apparently a member of the old aristocracy and tells us indignantly how the Lord Protector came into the House in ‘grey worsted stockings’.¹⁷³ They had their own way of writing love letters in those days: Mistress Osborne begins hers ‘Sir’ like a letter to a newspaper, and ends up ‘your humble servant’ or ‘your faithful friend’. Almost a la Gordon.

your loving

son Jack.

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

[Gastons]

25th Oct 1916

My dear Galahad,

As usually happens in these sort of things the violent controversy that we have been having for the last three weeks (& which I quite agree with you in giving up) has obscured the original subject of the discussion ‘exaltation’. I want to know if you understand that sort of ‘fey’ state of mind which I described, or tried to describe, as coming on when one is very drowzy. Say what you think of this in your next letter. The question arose out of the ‘Morte’ which I have now read from the beginning of the Quest of the Grael to the end, thus finishing the whole thing. I certainly enjoyed it much better than before, and wished that I had the first volume here as well. The quietness of the end, and the description of Arthur’s death are particularly good–you must give it another try sometime.

It was silly of me to ask you about ‘Cranford’ etc, as I have a MacMillan’s list here and could have looked them up myself if I had had the sense: but I suppose you regard that as a big ‘if! I can understand that it is not pleasing to have these in the same edition as the Jane Austens, tho’ for me of course it would make a nice change. I don’t know when I shall buy some new books, as I am at present suffering from a flash of poverty–poverty comes in flashes like dulness or pleasure. When I do it will be either ‘Our Village’, ‘Cranford’ or Chaucer’s ‘Troilus & Cressida’, if I can get a decent edition of it. By all accounts it is much more in my line than the ‘Canterbury Tales’, and anyway I can take no more interest in them since I have discovered that my Everyman edition is abridged & otherwise mutilated. I wish they wouldn’t do that (‘Lockhart’,¹⁷⁴ you say, is another case) without telling you. I can’t bear to have anything but what a man really wrote.

I have been reading the quaintest book this week, ‘The Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple’ in Everyman. I suppose, as a historian you will know all about those two, but in case you don’t they lived in Cromwell’s time. It is very interesting to read the ordinary everyday life of a girl in those days, and, tho’ of course they are often dull there is a lot in them you would like: especially a description of how she spends the day and another of a summer evening in the garden. It is funny too, to notice that, just like us, she says that she never wished very hard for anything in her life without being dissapointed. But then I suppose everyone in the world has said that sometime or other. It is perhaps not a book to read straight through but well worth having.

My other reading–in French–has been Maeterlinck’s ‘Oiseau Bleu’: of course I have read it before in English and seen it on the stage, as you know, but I am absolutely delighted to read it again. Now that I have the original I wish you would adopt my English version, which is yours forever for the taking whenever you care to walk up to my room at home and find it on the little open bookcase. You could do it to day when you are home for lunch: I don’t know why you have never read this glorious book before, but please do as I suggest & (though it is always dangerous, as we know, to recommend) I think you will have some real joy out of it. The scenes in the Temple of Night and in the Kingdom of the Future are exactly in our line.

Unfortunately we have not got a complete set of Scott here–only odd Everyman copies of which ‘The Fair Maid of Perth’ is not one. The earlier period is of course all the better for me, in fact to be honest I am childish enough to like ‘Ivanhoe’ better than any of his, and next to it ‘Quentin Durward’. What is ‘Guy Mannering’ like? The alternative title of ‘The Astrologer’ sounds attractive but of course it may not have much to do with it.¹⁷⁵

How’s the poor, miserable, ill-fated, star-crossed, hapless, lonely, neglected, misunderstood puppy getting along? What are you going to call him, or rather, to speak properly, how hight he? Don’t give him any commonplace name, and above all let it suit his character & appearance. Something like Sigurd, Pelleas or Mars if he is brisk and warlike, or Mime, Bickernocker or Knutt if he is ugly and quaint. Or perhaps he is dead by now, poor little devil!

The book you refer to is ‘How to Form a Literary Taste’ by Arnold Benett:¹⁷⁶ the edition is pretty but the book is not of any value. The very title–as if you set out to ‘learn’ literature the way you learn golf–shews that the author is not a real book-lover but only a priggish hack. I never read any of his novels & don’t want to. Have you? By the way, he is a rather violent atheist, so I suppose I shall meet him by

‘The fiery, flaming flood of Phlegethon’, ¹⁷⁷

as good old Spencer has it. I am sure Lockhart’s Life of Scott would be good, but 5 vols. at 3/6 each is too much: at any rate I had sooner get Boswell if I were going to make a start on biography. I have read to day–there’s absolutely no head or tale in this letter but you ought to be used to that by now–some 10 pages of Tristam Shandy’¹⁷⁸ and am wondering whether I like it. It is certainly the maddest book ever written or ‘ever wrote’ as dear Dorothy Osborne would say. It gives you the impression of an escaped lunatic’s conversation while chasing his hat on a windy May morning. Yet there are beautiful serious parts in it though of a sentimental kind, as I know from my father. Have you ever come across it?

Tang-Tang there goes eleven o’clock ‘Tis almost faery time’.¹⁷⁹ Don’t you simply love going to bed. To curl up warmly in a nice warm bed, in the lovely darkness, that is so restful & then gradually drift away into sleep…Perhaps to enjoy this properly you must stay up till 11 working fairly hard at something–even a letter like this–so as to be really hungry for sleep. At home, like you, I often get started off on a train of thought which keeps me awake: here I am always too tired tho’ goodness knows, eleven is early enough compared with some peoples times. It is strange, somehow, to read about concerts & Bill Patterson’s visits etc; when I am at Bookham everything at home seems a little unreal. Each of you (i.e. my friends) is quite real by him or herself but ‘en bloc’ you seem like something out of a book. I wish I had been with you at D. Garrick.¹⁸⁰ I have always heard it was good. I shall not soon forget that morning at the far end of the strand, with the pleasant ‘Frightfulness’ of the Waves. I can still remember exactly what it felt like in the water and also running up to the cave. Take it all in all, we’ve had many pleasant times in our lives, & of these many (in my case) the most part together. You’d think I was bidding you an eternal farewell the way I’m going on. There’s quarter past, so I’ll say ‘Good morning’ not ‘Night’ for you read this at breakfast, don’t you? I’m turning out the gas. Bon soir!

Jack

By the way, what sort of voice has a ‘cracked turnip’. See your last letter.

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 134-5):

[Gastons]

27/Oct./16.

My dear Papy,

Far be it from me to plead in extenuation of the disgusting freak of Algy that it was only fun. The debauches of a ruffian are not the less disgraceful because they are the product of levity, and Nero is said to have fiddled–about which I have my own views–on a famous occasion. As a matter of fact, to be serious, if Elia’s theory that ‘the best puns are the worst’¹⁸¹ is true also of Limericks, Swinburne’s Majorca one is a masterpiece, and so is the next one about Birmingham–though on the whole I would agree with you in preferring the ‘deserted garden’.

I was very sorry to hear of the death of ‘A Student in arms’, whose book I read last holidays as you may remember.¹⁸² I never met anything exactly like it before, it is wonderfully original and beautiful. Nothing in it however, if I remember aright, quite reaches the level of this last article, a wise and charming piece of work–and doubly so from the exquisite appropriateness with which it comes from the pen of a man who died a few days after writing it. As you say, there is almost something divine about the way in which he sums up his beliefs and his views on death, just as though he knew the end was coming and meant to finish off his work. The substance of this paper resembles Bernard Shaw’s cry, ‘Why not give Christianity a trial?’–so far at least as the writing of a scholar and a gentleman can resemble that of a Philistine. Indeed nowadays there seems to be a tendency in that direction: there is some possibility of getting back it appears, to what Christ actually did teach, and clearing away all the additions His followers have been tacking on for the last twenty centuries.

Before leaving the subject of Student in Arms’, I must draw your attention to what seems a mis-print in the sentence marked. Surely the full stop should come after ‘discouraged’, and not after ‘offend’. The author first states a general principle Anxious responsibility is discouraged’, and then goes on to quote as an example of this, the fact that ‘if our limbs offend etc.’. As it stands, the sense is not so clear.¹⁸³

I am glad that all these ‘manifestations’ of Boas prove to emanate from the same ‘quella’ as editors of MSS. say: perhaps some day, he might be of use to us. Congratulate Dick from me on his decoration and Joey on his scholarship–as to which we can only pray ‘adsit omen.’

That is rather a fine article on Hackluyt in this weeks Literary Supplement¹⁸⁴ and a good deal of it might stand as an apology–in the Newman sense of course–for my hours spent on poor Mandeville. The quotation about the deer coming down to the water ‘as we rowed’¹⁸⁵ is particularly attractive.

How goes the picture? Even if Mr. Baker¹⁸⁶ is not the society you would choose, still even a compulsory companion (that’s a pretty sounding mouthful) to swallow up some part of your solitary week ends is a good thing. Indeed logically, the more disagreeable the companion the more he ought to reconcile you to subsequent loneliness.

your loving

son Jack.

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

[Gastons

1 November 1916]

My dear Galahad,

I can’t let it pass unchallegend that you should put ‘Boewulf’ and ‘Malory’ together as if they belonged to the same class. One is a mediaeval, English prose romance and the other an Anglo Saxon epic poem: one is Christian, the other heathen: one we read just as it was actually written, the other in a translation. So you can like one without the other, and any way you must like or dislike them both for different reasons. It is always very difficult of course to explain to another person the good points of a book he doesn’t like. I know what you mean by that ‘crampy’ feeling: you mean there are no descriptions in Beowulf as in a modern book, so little is told you & you have to imagine so much for yourself.

Well, for one thing, remember that nearly all your reading is confined to about 150 years of one particular country: this is no disgrace to you, most people’s circle is far smaller. But still, compared with the world this one little period of English literature is very small, and tho’ you (and I of course) are so accustomed to the particular kinds of art we find inside it, yet we must remember that there are an infinite variety outside it, quite as good in different ways. And so, if you suddenly go back to an Anglo-Saxon gleeman’s lay, you come up against something absolutely different–a different world. If you are to enjoy it, you must forget your previous ideas of what a book should be and try and put yourself back in the position of the people for whom it was first made. When I was reading it I tried to imagine myself as an old Saxon thane sitting in my hall of a winter’s night, with the wolves & storm outside and the old fellow singing his story. In this way you get the atmosphere of terror that runs through it–the horror of the old barbarous days when the land was all forests and when you thought that a demon might come to your house any night & carry you off. The description of Grendel stalking up from his ‘fen and fastness’ thrilled me. Besides, I loved the simplicity of the old life it represents: it comes as a relief to get away from all complications about characters & ‘problems’ to a time when hunting, fighting, eating, drinking & loving were all a man had to think of it. And lastly, always remember it’s a translation which spoils most things.

As to ‘Malory’ I liked it so awfully this time–far better than before–that I don’t know what to say. How can I explain? For one thing, to me it is a world of its own, like Jane Austen. Though impossible, it is very fully realized, and all the characters are old friends, we know them so well: you get right away in those forests and somehow to me all the adventures & meetings & dragons seem very real. (I don’t beleive that last sentence conveys my meaning a bit) Then too I find in it a rest as you do in Scott: he (M. I mean) is so quiet after our modern writers & thinks of his ‘art’ so little: he is not self-conscious. Of course he doesn’t describe as Morris does, but then he doesn’t need to: in the ‘Well’ you feel it is only a tale suddenly invented and therefore everything has to be described. But the Round Table is different: it was a hundred years ago & shall be a hundred years hence. It wasn’t just made up like an ordinary tale, it grew. Malory seems to me almost a historian: his world is real to me, his characters are old friends whom you get to know better & better as you go on–he is a companiabl author & good when you’re lonely.

I suppose this sounds all rot? But after all when you say it ‘doesn’t suit you’ you strike at the root of the matter. Perhaps you can’t enjoy it just as I couldn’t enjoy Green’s Short History:¹⁸⁷ it is not my fault that I don’t like oysters but no reasoning will make me like them. This controversy has proved even more expansive than the other: if you had given me any excuse for going on with the ‘exaltation’ one I’m afraid I should never get to bed to-night. By the way I suppose at 10 o’clock when I am beginning your letter you are just getting into bed? Remember at 10 next Wednesday night to imagine me just spreading out your one in front of me and starting to jaw. But seriously, do I bore you. I have taken up such reams about ‘Boewulf etc. It is easy to explain a thought, but to explain a feeling is very hard.

Last week-end I spent in reading ‘The Professor’. It forms a nice sort of suppliment to Villette–something [like] the same story told from the man’s side. I liked the description of Hunsden extremely & also the detestable brother. I do wish she had left out the awful poetry in the proposal scene: they are the worst verses in the language I should think. Its difficult to understand how a woman of Ch. Brontës genius could help seeing how bad they were. But on the whole it is a very enjoyable book, tho’ not of course to be compared with her other three. What did you think of it?

Yes, I shall be home for Xmas, rather earlier in fact. This exam.¹⁸⁸ will take place in the first week of December and when it is over I shall come straight home. I am beginning to funk it rather: I wish you were in for it with me (so as to be sure of one, at least, worse than myself). I wish I could see ‘The Winter’s Tale’: it, ‘The Midsummer’s Nights Dream’ & the Tempest are the only things of Shakespeare I really appreciate, except the Sonnets.¹⁸⁹ It is a very sweet, sort of old fairy-tale style of thing. You must certainly see it. As to Bennet’s book, if a person was really a book-lover, however ignorant, he wouldn’t go and look up a text book to see what to buy, as if literature was a subject to be learned like algebra: one thing would lead him to another & he would go through the usual mistakes & gain experience. I hate this idea of ‘forming a taste’. If anyone like the feuilletons in the ‘Sketch’ better than Spenser, for Heaven’s sake let him read them: anything is better than to read things he doesn’t really like because they are thought classical. I say, old man, it’s beastly kind of you to keep the ‘Country of the Blind’ till I come. Of course if you hadn’t told me I should have thought you would throw it off the top of the tram. Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha, likewise He-He-He! (You do love that sort of writing!) By the way why do you call it your dog if it lives at Glenmachen? I suppose in the same way as you like Shakespeare but I don’t like reading him? Can’t write more to night, your last letter was very short–

J.

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 142):

[Gastons]

3/11/16.

My dear Papy,

This is a surprise. I can hardly account for it, if it be true–a jump from the rank of second Lieutenant to that of Captain is very unusual, is it not?¹⁹⁰ Even among the temporary people. However, I suppose you will know all about it in your next letter from Big Brother, who will doubtless communicate the facts with much codotto. I only hope we shall not be disappointed in any way.

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

I am reading at present, what do you think? Our own friend ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’.¹⁹¹ It is one of those books that are usually read too early to appreciate, and perhaps don’t come back to. I am very glad however to have discovered it. The allegory of course is obvious and even childish, but just as a romance it is unsurpassed, and also as a specimen of real English. Try a bit of your Ruskin or Macaulay after it, and see the difference between diamonds and tinsel.

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

your loving

son Jack.

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

[Gastons

8 November 1916]

My dear Arthur,

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

To be serious: if I were going to three of them I should choose Aida & the Zauberflut¹⁹² straight off without hesitation: the latter is of course old fashioned but, to me–tho’ of course my views on music are those of an ignoramus–the formal old beauty of old music has something very attractive about it. At all events a thing with an overture like that must be good. As to the libretto, my ideas are rather hazy, but an article on it which I read last year in the ‘Times’ gave me the impression of something rather nice & fantastic. These two then I’d certainly go to: in the third it is more difficult to decide. ‘Tales of Hoffman’¹⁹³ I thought was a comic opera–at any rate I am sure it’s not in the first rank. ‘Carmen’ & ‘the Lily’¹⁹⁴ are out of the question–the latter being an awful hurdy-gurdy, tawdry business by all accounts. Perhaps on the whole you would get more pleasure out of ‘Faust’ than any: here too you’d have the dramatic interest as well. ‘Pagliacci’ & ‘Cavaleria’ you have seen haven’t you?–Though of course that’s no reason why you shouldn’t see them again.

‘En passant’ I don’t exactly ‘despise’ your opera-book. I think it very useful like a Greek grammar or a time-table, but no more a ‘book’ in the proper sense than they are. For instance I should never think of getting ‘Bradshaw’s Railway Guide’ printed on hand made paper with illustrations by Rackham, wd you? And talking about Rackham I saw in my French list the other day an edition of Perrault’s ‘Contes’¹⁹⁵ ‘avec gravures en couleurs de Rackham’ for 1 fr. 95 (at the present rate of exchange about 1/6, I suppose). If its the same Rackham that wd. be wonderful value, wouldn’t it? Though I daresay Perrault himself (the French ‘Hans Anderson’) would not be up to much,–coming as he did of the most prosaic nation on earth.

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

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

What fiddlesticks about Malory being only a translation: I wish you were here that I could have the pleasure of stripping every shred of skin from your bones and giving your intestines to the birds of the air. What do you mean by saying ‘It’ is ‘an old French legend’: the ‘Morte’ includes a hundred different Arthurian legends & as you know the Arthur myth is Welsh. Of course he didn’t invent the legends any more than Morris invented the Jason legends: but his book is an original work all the same. Just as the famous ‘Loki Bound’ of Lewis is based upon a story in the Edda, but still the poem is original–the materials being re-created by the genius of that incomparable poet. As a matter of fact I am at present reading a real ‘old french’ romance ‘The High History of the Holy Graal’ translated in the lovely ‘Temple Classics’.¹⁹⁶ If I dared to advise you any longer–. It is absolute heaven: it is more mystic & eerie than the ‘Morte’ & has [a] more connected plot. I think there are parts of it even you’d like.

I am also reading Chaucer’s minor poems (‘World’s Classics’,¹⁹⁷ a scrubby edition but the only one I can find) and am halfway thr[ough] ‘The House of Fame’, a dream poem half funny & half fantastic that I like very much. But the print, tho’ clear, is very small. As to ‘The Letters of D.O. to W.T.’ I suggest you had better have a look at them in my copy before you do anything. There is a lot in them I think you would like but also a good deal that is dull.

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

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

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

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 143):

[Gastons]

9th Nov. 1916.

My dear Papy,

As it happened I had heard from Warnie himself shortly after my letter to you and thus got the truth about the promotion.¹⁹⁸ I think we really have a right to plume ourselves on this–the double step is so very rare. You say ‘if inside the next year it is made permanent’: is there any prospect of that’s happening? If so we had better go and live with him or else get him to make us a separation allowance each. In the mean time avoid your bricklaying friend who may have something to say to you on the subject of ‘temporary’ commands. (Ah, these conversations between a brick layer and a brick dropper!)

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

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

The hero of ‘Lady Connie’ was certainly a detestable fellow, though I must admit that in places I found something rather attractive about him. At the auction of the pictures he is particularly great. But on the whole, as you say, the book is unsatisfactory, and she ought to have married the Pole What’s his name. We are all reading Clodd’s memoirs¹⁹⁹ here, which you will have seen reviewed everywhere. It is rather disappointing though, and the best story in it is the one about the Shah of Persia quoted in the Spectator ‘Library Supplement’. There is a certain vulgarity about Clodd: he seems rather too pleased with his famous friends. I like last week’s ‘Romance’ by the Student in Arms very much–in some ways as much as the other, tho’ perhaps you will not agree with me.²⁰⁰

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

your loving

son Jack.

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

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

[Gastons 15

November 1916]

Dear Arthur,

I must begin my letter this week by heartily apologizing for some foolish remarks which I thoughtlessly directed against a book for whose merits your approval should have been to me and to all who enjoy the honour of your friendship a sufficient guarantee. As you very properly remind me, I am profoundly ignorant of the scientific side of music in which you specially excel, while my aesthetic judgements on the subject are modelled upon the sane and temperate example of your own criticism. What amends I can make by studying with diligence the admirable work which you commend, shall immediately be made: for, believe me, I am not insensible of the kindness and indulgence which a man of your education has displayed in such musical discussions to a boy so ill informed as I.

Your verdict upon Macdonald’s tale was worthy of so shrewd and serious a gentleman as yourself: I can well understand that the puerilities which attract a schoolboy may indeed seem [a] waste of time to an experienced business man. I am not a little ashamed of my own lightheadedness, and am resolved to turn my attention to that excellent study of history with which you beguile your leisure. Here may I take the liberty of expressing my ardent and continued admiration of those qualities which make you the ornament of the society to which you belong: first and foremost the practical nature of your character which enables you to relinquish in a moment those trivial fairy tales and such like useless inventions: then your habits of economy and regularity, your sound knowledge of the Lord’s Word, your unaffected piety, your knowledge of modern thought, the perfect control of your temper, the justness of your sentiments and–above all–the elegance of your language.

Well! we’ll drop it now, as I want some room left for a chat: but honestly thats the sort of answer your last letter seemed to expect. Goodness!, you gave me an awful dressing down! And all because I dared to make a joke on a book of yours that has been a recognised subject for fooling this year or so. Perhaps, however, you just happened to be in bad form when you wrote, so I needn’t take it too seriously. Or, what is more likely, J. M.²⁰¹ has been annoying you and I come in for the aftermath. Anyway, language such as I have just read is not pleasant, and I was on the point of writing a very rude letter. But I remembered, what I do hope you will remember old man, that real friendships are very, very rare and one doesn’t want to endanger them by quarelling over trifles. We seem to be always sparing now a days: I dare say its largely my fault (tho’ in this case I really don’t know why you’re so angry) but anyway do let us stop it. Perhaps my nerves are a bit on edge as I get nearer to this abominable exam., and that makes me irritable. But I’ll try to do my best if you will.

So I may imagine you this evening just about now coming from dinner at Lily’s with Mr. Thompson, with the memory of Aida’ from last night and the prospect of the ‘Magic Flute’ tomorrow! I would give much to be in your place, and more to be in the same place with both of us there. I am very interested to hear what you think of the ‘Flute’, so mind you give me a special account of it–and accounts of the others also. Aida, of course, if well sung and staged must be enjoyable. I do hope you found them all three so, for that matter.

It must be lovely to really appreciate music (I am not fooling now). My taste for it was always that of a philistine and I am afraid even that is leaving me now. Perhaps it is as well I was not with you, or I might just have sat eating my heart out because I couldn’t enjoy what I would have enjoyed in those delightful days when we first ‘discovered’ one another. But even if music fails I still have books!

And talking about books I am surprised that you don’t say more of the ‘Golden Key’:²⁰² to me it was absolute heaven from the moment when Tangle ran into the wood to the glorious end in those mysterious caves. What a lovely idea ‘The country from which the shadows fall’! It is funny that we should both have the same idea about the Temple Classics. I was almost sure they were out of print and only wrote on the off chance for the Pilgrims’ Progress (did I mention it? I have read it again and am awfully bucked) and then for the ‘Grael’. I wonder would Mullan’s tell you a thing was out of print just because they didn’t think it worth while to get you the few we’d want At any rate, for paper etc they are far the prettiest cheap books I know, and if you still think of getting ‘The Com-pleat Angler’²⁰³ I should advise you to try this edition. The ‘set’ of the print and the notes in the nice broad margin are what I particularly like–Also the frontispieces–in some. My ‘Grael’ has a lovely one (in the extreme mediaeval style of course) in each volume by Burne-Jones & a title page design that reminds me of the Goodfridaymusic. I envy you, having your Letters of D.O. to W.T. in the Wayfarers–a very nice series except for the end leaf if I remember right–mine is only the 1/-Everyman and rather shop-soiled at that!

Was Mr. Thompson as nice as ever last night? He is a man I should love to meet again–but here too you have all the luck. Are you still reading ‘The Antiquary’ and does it still please you as much as ever? Here I am at the end of my letter and I had meant to give you a long jaw about some beautiful frost & mist effects I saw on Saturday evening (like Oldbuck’s article on Castrametation) but you will have to pine without it. I must say I heartily agree with your remarks about autumn. There are some lovely colours here, & though I fancy there are finer ‘cold’ looking afternoons at home, the woods here are perhaps even richer.

Time to dry up now. My head is splitting, & my feet are like ice so I suppose if you were here you’d explain to me how & why I was in for a cold. Well I’d be glad to have you even on those terms. Good-night & do be indulgent to my many failings. There’s a frost–

J.

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 145-6):

[Gastons]

19th Nov. 1916.

My dear Papy,

It is Sunday–though not very early in the morning–and so I am afraid this letter will be late: but yours did not arrive until yesterday and this is really the first time I have had. I have heard of the failing of my spelling in many places, at many seasons, and from many sources (even the ‘for a boy of your age it is scandalous’ or sometimes ‘ludicrous’ has a familiar ring) and I am only too well aware of the truth. However, we must hope for the best. As to the other little episode, we must record ‘marker, one up!’ But you have forgotten to say what the word was: I should like to know.

In spite of the tutor’s obliging promise to find, or to use the safer form ‘discover’ lodgings, a letter arrived from him two or three days ago with a form for entrance in which, among other things, he wants ‘your adress during examination’–but no word of advice. I accordingly wrote at once to my Malvern friend, who replied saying that he could not tell of any place, but that candidates as a rule write and ask the college. I did this and got an answer saying he would let me know of some place ‘presently’ and in the meantime I am to fill up the rest of the form and send it. This I am doing today, putting down the colleges in the order we arranged. He also asks for my birth certificate, which is rather a nuisance. Perhaps you had better see about that exemption business.

I was very sorry when I read the letter from my friend Cooper. His people have gone bankrupt and he has come through a very rough time, although he does not say anything about leaving the Coll. It must be very hard lines on him and he was a thoroughly good fellow. I had asked to be remembered to Smugy and the old man has wished me every success and advised me to read my ‘Little Thompson’ via Cooper.

It is snowing fast as I write, and has been since yesterday evening. Kirk is actually in bed this morning ‘with a cold’. This is so very rare with him that I confess it makes me a little uneasy. Thanks very much but I think your suit case or Warnie’s will do very well for the present trip, and we can talk about the other later on.

your loving

son Jack.

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

[Gastons

22 November 1916]

My dear Arthur,

I quite agree with you and hope we shall have no more controversies at any rate for the present: for, as you say, it is too much to hope that we should live in peace and good will for more than a few weeks continuously. In passing I must explain that when I said your ‘language was not pleasant’ I only meant the general tone of what you said–‘diction’ or ‘sentiments’ as Jane Austin would have delighted to put it. I wasn’t using ‘language’ in the slang sense of the word meaning swearing–for of course I don’t mind ‘language’ of that sort in itself. However, this is only a lesson in English & has nothing to do with the argument, which we will consign to the swarthy mere of Acheron!

Which reminds me I am no longer in a position to take your advice about ‘Letters from Hell’ as we had a jumble sale for the red cross or something in ‘our village’ last week and I contributed this. A mean enough offering indeed but they tell me it sold for 1/6! I am at present enjoying the malicious pleasure of expecting that the buyer will be as dissapointed as I was.

What a pity about the ‘Magic Flute’: I particularly wanted to hear your impressions of it. I am surprised to learn that it is ‘comic’ (a horrid word to describe a horrid thing) tho’ of course it may only be nice humour of the fantastic kind. Your description of Aida is most tantalizing, and I would love to have been there. Even if I had found that I could no longer enjoy the music–tho’ I think I am still up to Verdi–I could always have amused myself by talking to you or coughing loudly in the middle of the best passages! Seriously, did they play that lovely prelude well and did the Belfast boors give you a chance to hear it in peace? I daresay I am wrong about the ‘Wayfarer’s Library’: but whatever the end-leaves be like I remember that the whole effect is good. Have you looked at ‘Dorothy Osborne’ yet and do you think you will like her? I am desperately in love with her and have accordingly made arrangements to commit suicide from 10 till 4 tomorrow precisely. I wonder does the ‘Wayfarer’ series publish my latest discovery–the most glorious novel (almost) that I have ever read. I daresay you have read it already or at any rate you must have hearded it praised too often to need my advice. It is Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘House with the Seven Gables’.²⁰⁴ I love the idea of a house with a curse! And although there is nothing supernatural in the story itself there is a brooding sense of mystery and fate over the whole thing: Have you read it? See if it is in the ‘Wayfarers’ as I want to get an edition of my own as soon as possible.

I am afraid I have really no memories! I had clean forgotten your ever speaking to me about the ‘Golden Key’: tho’ I well remember setting off in the cab that grey, early morning and waiting for L. & G.²⁰⁵ at the station! How funny Gordon was with his stiff back! That sounds a strange thing to say but you know what I mean. But after all has not Hewlett (or is it some one else) told us that the fairies have the shortest memories of all! So short that they cannot even remember their lovers from one new moon till the next.

I must say I admire your pluck in taking back ‘The Antiquary’ after so many years! But as you say the books we buy or return doesnt make much matter to Macmullans. I was sure you’d like the Antiquary very much. I tried to start ‘Guy Mannering’ on Saturday but some how it didn’t grip me. As to the ‘mist scene’ I am afraid tho’ it was very beautiful at the time it will hardly come to life again,

‘inimitable on earth By modle or by shading pencil drawn.’

I will leave you to imagine it.

Your imagination by the way has had a long enough rest by now. I have so far purposely refrained from saying anything about further instalments of ‘Papillon’, for fear, since you seemed to have no inclination to go on with it, that it might only hinder you from starting something new. But apparently this is not coming off. Do let us have something–tale, novel, what you will. I am revolving plans for a sort of fantasy much shorter than Bleheris and–which I hope will be an improvement–in modern English. I don’t know exactly when I shall inflict the first instalment upon you, but like the people in Northanger Abbey you may be prepared for something ‘really horrible’.

Talking about ‘Northanger’ I have been condemned during this last week to watch Mrs K. reading it in her own edition–your one. I wish you could have seen it. It is not that she actually dirtied it, but what is almost worse she held it so rudely and so close over the fire that the boards have developed a permanent curve and the whole book has a horrible twist! It went to my heart all the more because it was your copy: at least I couldn’t get that idea out of my head[.] Must stop now sorry I was late starting to night.

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 146-7):

[Gastons]

Tues. 28th Nov. 1916.

My dear Papy,

This is not a proper letter–I will write you that later on when I have got yours. Meanwhile I am writing only to ask you to send me either your suit case or Warnie’s as soon as you get this, for the fateful day is next Tuesday. Although the tutor said he would write and tell me of lodgings and also the place of the exam he has as yet done neither of these things: but I suppose its alright. Write soon to your

loving son,

Jack.

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

[Gastons

29 November 1916]

Although by experience I am somewhat shy of recommending books to other people I think I am quite safe in earnestly advising you to make ‘the Gables’ your next purchase. By the way I shouldn’t have said ‘mystery’, there is really no mystery in the proper sense of the word, but a sort of feeling of fate & inevitable horror as in ‘Wuthering Heights’. I really think I have never enjoyed a novel more. There is one lovely scene where the villain–Judge Phycheon–has suddenly died in his chair, all alone in the old house, and it describes the corpse sitting there as the day wears on and the room grows darker–darker–and the ticking of his watch. But that sort of bald description is no use! I must leave you to read that wonderful chapter to yourself. There is also a very good ‘story in a story’–curiously resembling the Cosmo one²⁰⁶ tho’ of course not so openly impossible. I intend to read all Hawthorne after this. What a pity such a genius should be a beastly American!

I am sorry to hear of your infatuation (very much inFATuation)^∗ for a certain lady, but you need not despair, nor do I propose to call you out; we will divide mother & daughter between us, and you can have first choice! I really don’t know which would be the worse do you?

That is certainly a glorious prelude to Aida. Do you remember that first afternoon last hols! How dissappointed we were at first and yet how we enjoyed ourselves afterwards sitting under those trees in the evening (or rather late afternoon) sunlight & throwing pencils & poems from one to the other? Well, we shall soon be there again if all goes well. I am going up for this damnable exam next Monday, shall be back here not later than Saturday & home on the following Monday if not sooner. So that is all well, but I wish to hell next week was over. Don’t you sympathise with me? Pray for me to all your gods and goddesses like a good man!

No the Meagre One was not born with a squint: but long, long, long ago, so long ago that Stonehenge had a roof and walls & was a new built temple, he killed a spider. The good people of his day, outraged at this barbarity, stuck a dagger thro his nerve centre which paralyzed him without making him unconscious, seated him on the altar at St. Henge’s temple & locked him up with the spiders son. The latter began to spin a solid mass of cobwebs from the Opposite corner. Very very slowly through countless years the web grew while the poor Meagre One–who couldn’t die–developed a squint from watching it getting nearer. At last after countless ages Stonehenge dissapeared under an enormous mass of web & remained thus till one day Merlin hapenned to set a match to it and so discover what was inside: hence the myth of Merlin’s having ‘built’ St. Henge’s. To this day if you go there at sunrise & run round it 7 times, looking over your shoulder you can see again the wretched prisoner trying to struggle as the horrid sticky strands close round him. Cheap excursion trains are run for those who wish to try it.

The Tales of a Grandfather²⁰⁷ in a rather scrubby but old edition has lived in the study these ten years, so you may try a taste of it before risking your money. I imagine it is in rather a childish style, tho’ of course you know more about Scott than I do.

I am sorry to hear that you have not yet begun your novel, and as I am sending you four pages of punishment I trust you will let me have something in your next letter. Which reminds [me] I don’t know what my address will be at Oxford so you must just write to Bookham as usual. Do go on with the good work. What about taking that magic story Mr Thompson told us, for instance, toning down the supernatural parts a bit & making a Donegal novel of the Bronte type? Or else working that local idea of the Easelys²⁰⁸ and all. Remember the second attempt will be easier & pleasanter than the first, and the third than the second.

Talking about the Easeleys, whether I read ‘Guy Mannering’ or no I shall not take to skimming as Kelsie does–for much as we esteem our beautiful and accomplished cousin–as Mr Collins²⁰⁹ would have said–I don’t think I shall follow her in literary matters. I am quite sure that every thing bad is true of your cousin Florence: she and her sister are young women who need transportation–as also my cousins at Bloom-field.²¹⁰ But indeed if only those who deserved to have books had them!–who besides you & me would there be to support the booksellers?

We have had some glorious frosty mornings here, with the fields all white & the sun coming up late like a red hot ball behind the bare woods. How I do love winter. We have had a book of Yeats’ prose out of the library, and this has revived my taste for things Gaelic & mystic. Ask Mullan’s if he knows a book called ‘The Rosacrutian Cosmo Conception’ or any on that subject. Gute Nacht. I wish I were dead–

Jack

∗Ha! Ha! Poor little Bill, he only tries to be agreeee-able.

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 152-3):

[Gastons]

Friday Dec. 1st 1916

My dear Papy,

I am sorry I did not tell you earlier that the exam was so soon, but the idea was so familiar in my own mind that I only just realized, the day when I wrote to you, that I had never given you the date. I suppose by the time this reaches you, you will have sent off the suit case etc., but even if you have not had time, I dare say Mrs. K. would have something that would serve. So far, that pestilent knave at New College has failed to keep his promise of letting me know about lodgings: however, if the worst comes to the worst I can always go to an hotel, though of course this will be more expensive for you and less convenient for me.

We have also seen about this exemption business. K. and I both thought the matter beyond us, so we decided to consult my solicitors (Don’t forget the ‘my’–or is ‘my man of business’ the better expression) at Leatherhead. Having only a limited knowledge of solicitor’s offices–purely provincial in fact–I was duly impressed. He was a state solicitor–a little, bald, figetty man, in a dingy black suit, and he advised me to put my case before the Chief Recruiting officer at Guildford. I wrote to the latter and today, after a long interval, have a reply saying that I am exempt from the Military Service Act, but that I must get registered at once: which I shall do either this afternoon or tomorrow.

The cold here is quite as bad as with you, and it freezes every night. This week I have been reading ‘The House of the Seven Gables’ which I have often heard praised but never met before. Have you? It is well worth the reading. As to coming home, the Oxford authorities, whose principle apparently is to worry the candidate by every concievable sort of mystery, have given me no idea how long the exam lasts. But I shall write to you about that from Oxford next week. I suppose I want only a day or two to get back from here and bring my trunk from Bookham. Many thanks for the enclosure–I wish it were for my sixteenth birthday, with two years more of Gastons life ahead.

your loving

son Jack.

Lewis went up to Oxford for the first time on Monday, 4 December 1916, to sit for a scholarship examination. He described this visit in SBJ XII where he says he found lodgings in the first house ‘on the right as you turn into Mansfield Road out of Holywell’. The examination, given in Oriel College, took place between 5 and 9 December, after which he returned to Great Bookham.

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 156):

[1 Mansfield Road,

Oxford

7 December 1916]

My dear P.,

This is Thursday and our last papers are on Saturday morning so I will cross on Monday night if you will kindly make the arrangements. We have so far had General Paper, Latin Prose, Greek and Latin unseen, and English essay. The subject for the latter was Johnson’s ‘People confound liberty of thinking with liberty of talking’²¹¹–rather suggestive, tho’ to judge by faces, some did not find it so.

I don’t know exactly how I am doing, because my most dangerous things–the two proses–are things you can’t judge for yourself. The General paper was ideal and each of the unseens contained a piece I had done before. I am surprised at the number of candidates, tho’ I can find only one going to New, a Harrow boy who sits opposite me.

The place has surpassed my wildest dreams: I never saw anything so beautiful, especially on these frosty moonlight nights: tho’ in the Hall of Oriel where we do our papers it is fearfully cold at about four o’clock on these afternoons. We have most of us tried with varying success to write in our gloves. I will see you then on Tuesday morning.

your loving son,

Jack.

He crossed over to Belfast on 11 December and his rather fearful worries about the examination were laid to rest when he received a letter of 13 December from the Master of University College, Reginald W. Macan,²¹² who said: ‘This College elects you to a Scholarship (New College having passed you over). Owing to your having furnished us with no Oxford address, I am obliged to send this to your home. I should have been glad to see you and ascertain your plans. Will you be so good now as to write to me and let me know what you propose to be doing between this time and next October’ (LP V: 159-60). An announcement of this award appeared in The Times of 14 December, along with the news that University College had awarded Jack not only a Scholarship but an Exhibition–an additional financial endowment.

The question for Jack, his father, and Mr Kirkpatrick was what Jack should do until the following October. Jack was keen to begin his studies, and in replying to the Master of University College, he said he had ‘formed no plans for the intervening time’ and that he would be glad of the Master’s ‘guidance in the matter (LP V: 160).

While they waited to hear from the Master, Albert Lewis wrote at once to thank Mr Kirkpatrick for all he had done to secure Jack the Scholarship. Those who have read C. S. Lewis’s tribute to Mr Kirkpatrick in Surprised by Joy will be interested in what the ‘Great Knock’ thought of his pupil. In his letter to Albert Lewis of 20 December, Mr Kirkpatrick said:

The generosity of your heart has led you to express yourself in terms altogether too complimentary to me. I ask you, what could I have done with Clive if he had not been gifted with literary taste and the moral virtue of perseverance? Now to whom is Clive indebted for his brains? Beyond all question to his father and mother. And I hold that he is equally indebted to them for those moral qualities which though less obvious and striking than the intellectual, are equally necessary for the accomplishment of any great object in life–I mean fixity of purpose, determination of character, persevering energy. These are the qualities that carried him through. I did not create them, and if they had not been there, I could not have accomplished anything. All this is so perfectly obvious that it is hardly worth emphasizing…As a dialectician, an intellectual disputant, I shall miss him, and he will have no successor. Clive can hold his own in any discussion, and the higher the range of the conversation, the more he feels himself at home. (LP V: 165)

Over Christmas Jack received a letter from the Master of University College. It has not survived, but Albert Lewis provided the gist of it in a letter to Warnie of 31 December. Dr Macan, he said, wrote to Jack

asking him what his intentions were in regard to Military Service, and informing him at the same time that all their Scholars are with the Colours, save one who is hopelessly unfit physically. Pretty plain speaking that! So now I have to start to look for a commission for Jacks. Failing that, I am afraid that he must either chuck Oxford or go into the ranks. Apparently it is a moral impossibility for a healthy man over 18 years of age to go into residence at Oxford. (LP V: 172-3)

Mr Kirkpatrick, again, solved the deadlock. He thought Jack should take Responsions, the University entrance examinations, and have this out of the way. In his letter to Albert of 2 January 1917 he pointed out that Mathematics ‘form an important element in this exam.’ and that Jack ‘could very usefully employ a good part of the day in working up a subject for which he has not only no taste, but on the contrary a distinct aversion (LP V: 174). It was further decided, as Jack mentioned in the letter to his father of 8 February, that if all his ideas about Oxford ‘fell through’, he would try for the Foreign Office. For this reason Mr Kirkpatrick planned for him to learn Italian, German and Spanish.

1 Carmen, an opera by Georges Bizet, first performed in 1875.

2 The village in question was Dorking.

3 Algernon Charles Swinburne, A Forsaken Garden (1878): ‘As a god self-slain on his own strange altar’.

4 29 January 1916.

5 Algernon Blackwood, The Education of Uncle Paul (1909).

6 ibid., ch. X, p. 130; ch. XIV, p. 182.

7 Enrico Caruso (1873-1921), Italian tenor who made his first public appearance in Naples in 1894, and whose powerful, wonderfully pure voice made him one of the greatest singers of the century.

8 ‘E lucevan le stelle’—‘and the stars shone’—is a song from Giacomo Puccini’s opera La Tosca, which was first performed in 1900.

9 Layamon (fl.1200), Brut. Lewis was referring to Arthurian Chronicles, Represented by Wace and Layamon, translated by Eugene Mason, with an introduction by Lucy Allen Paton, Everyman’s Library [1912].

10 i.e. a hackney-coachman.

11 Robert Bridges, The Spirit of Man: An Anthology in English and French From the Philosophers & Poets made by the Poet Laureate in 1915 & Dedicated by gracious permission to His Majesty the King (1916).

12 W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, The Mikado (1885), Act II.

13 The preliminary selections of persons to be conscripted were apparently going on at this time.

14 John Edmund Barkworth (1858-1929) was an English composer educated at Rugby, Oxford and the Royal College of Music. His chief work, an opera based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, was first performed on 7 January 1916.

15 Der Fliegende Hollander (‘The Flying Dutchman’), an opera by Richard Wagner (1843).

16 I Pagliacci (1892) is a short opera by Ruggiero Leoncavallo; Cavalleria Rusticana (1890) a short opera by Pietro Mascagni; and Rigoletto (1851) is an opera by Giuseppe Verdi.

17 John Ruskin, The Political Economy of Art (1857), the title of which was later changed to A Joy for Ever.

18 William Morris, Grettir Saga: The Story of Grettir the Strong, translated from the Icelandic by Eiríkr Magnússon and William Morris (1869).

19 William Morris, Völsunga Saga: The Story of the Volsungs and Niblungs, with Certain Songs from the Elder Edda, translated from the Icelandic by Eiríkr Magnússon and William Morris (1888).

20 Henry Rider Haggard, Pearl Maiden (1903).

21 Major George Harding, who was married to the former Charlotte Hope Ewart, had contracted double pneumonia in Sicily, where he had been sent to make the preliminary administrative arrangements for the transfer of a British Expeditionary Force to the Italian front. His wife was allowed to join him in Sicily, and she travelled overland alone via France and Italy

22 The home of the newlyweds, Gordon and Lily Ewart.

23 Robin W. Gribbon of ‘Ardvarna’, Strandtown, was Arthur Greeves’s cousin on his father’s side. His son, Charles Edward Gribbon (1898-1938), achieved distinction as an artist. (Sir) Frederick Lucius O’Brien (1869-1974) was Arthur’s cousin on his mother’s side. He had been educated at the Friends’ School, Lisburn, and Bootham School in York. He was the first chairman of the Northern Ireland Housing Trust, 1945-60, and during his life he held many civil and governmental positions in Belfast. He and Arthur often travelled together.

24 They were both Quakers.

25 He is referring to Gioacchino Rossini’s opera, Guillaume Tell, first performed in 1829. The opera is based on Friedrich von Schiller’s play, William Tell (1804). William Tell is arrested for failing to salute the Austrian hat which is set upon a pole, and compelled by Gesler to shoot at the apple which is placed upon his son’s head.

26 He means Robert Bridges is to blame because he translated the two pieces from Homer in The Spirit of Man.

27 Ecclesiastes 11:3: ‘In the place where the tree falleth, there shall it be.’

28 The Works of John Wesley, ed. Albert C. Outler, vol. 3 (1986), Sermon 108 ‘On Riches’, para. 8: ‘Nearly related to anger, if not a species of it, are fretfulness and peevishness. But are the rich more assaulted by these than the poor? All experience shows that they are. One remarkable instance I was a witness of many years ago. A gentleman of large fortune, while we were seriously conversing, ordered a servant to throw some coals on the fire. A puff of smoke came out. He threw himself back in his chair and cried out, “O Mr Wesley, these are the crosses which I meet with every day!” I could not help asking, “Pray, Sir John, are these the heaviest crosses you meet with?” Surely these crosses would not have fretted him so much if he had had fifty instead of five thousand pounds a year!’ (pp. 526-7). The ‘gentleman of large fortune’ was Sir John Phillipps (c. 1701-64).

29 The Collected Works of William Morris, with introduction by his daughter May Morris, 23 vols. (1910-15). The Works were limited to 1,050 copies.

30 George MacDonald, Phantastes: a Faerie Romance (1858). Lewis was reading the Everyman’s Library edition of 1915.

31 British Ballads: English Literature for Schools, ed. Arthur Burrell, Everyman’s Library [1914].

32 Sir Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), Introduction.

33 The lines are in fact from Shelley’s ‘Song’ (1824).

34 William Shakespeare, Henry V (1600), Prologue, 12.

35 Two terrible poets. Mrs Felicia Dorothea Hemans (1793-1835) published her first volume of Poems when she was 15. Amanda McKittrick Ros (1860-1939), known as ‘the World’s Worst Writer’, was the author of Irene Iddesleigh (1897) and Poems of Puncture (1915). It became a customary feature of Lewis’s Inklings meetings at Magdalen College to bet that no one could read a passage from Irene Iddlesleigh without a smile.

36 Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Break, Break, Break (1842), ll. 1-2: ‘Break, break, break, / On thy cold grey stones, O Sea’.

37 Philip Francis Little, Thermopylae and Other Poems (1916), reviewed as ‘An Uncertain Voice’ in The Times Literary Supplement (9 March 1916), p. 116.

38 Lewis’s mother’s mother, Mary Warren Hamilton (b. 16 December 1826) died on 22 March 1916. See The Hamilton Family in the Biographical Appendix.

39 George MacDonald, Sir Gibbie (1879).

40 George MacDonald, At the Back of the North Wind (1871).

41 Sir Launcelot’s castle in the Arthurian legend.

42 Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949), Belgian poetic dramatist and essayist, achieved great popularity with L’Oiseau bleu (1908) and its translation The Blue Bird (1909).

43 Robert Burns, ‘To a Mouse’ (1786): ‘The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley.’

44 Isaac Bickerstaffe, An Expostulation (1789): ‘Perhaps it was right to dissemble your love, / But–why did you kick me downstairs?’

45 Virgil, Aeneid, I,462: ‘Sunt lachrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt’ (‘There are tears for those things and they touch the minds of men.’)

46 Edward Henry Carson, Baron Carson (1854-1935), Ulster leader, was attorney general of Ireland.

47 The Starlight Express, a play based on Algernon Blackwood’s A Prisoner in Fairyland (1913), with incidental music by Edward Elgar, was first performed on 29 December 1915.

48 Louis Napoleon Parker’s Disraeli was first performed on 23 January 1911.

49 Benjamin Disraeli (1804-81), first Earl of Beaconsfield, was Prime Minister 1868 and 1874-80. He published a number of novels, including Vivian Grey (1826), Coningsby (1844), Sybil (1845) and Tancred (1847).

50 Arnold Bennett and Edward Knoblauch’s play Milestones (1912).

51 The 14th century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Lewis was reading the prose translation by E.J.B. Kirtlan (1912).

52 Sir Walter Scott, Rob Roy (1818).

53 Mary Russell Mitford, Our Village: Sketches of Rural Life, Character, and Scenery, 5 vols. (1824-32).

54 Jane Austen, Persuasion (1818).

55 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein (1818; 1831).

56 Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (1818).

57 Jane Austen, Emma (1816).

58 Aida, an opera by Giuseppe Verdi, first performed in 1871.

59 Mrs Kirkpatrick.

60 The Royal Academy of Art, London.

61 A complete list of the art works at the Royal Academy Exhibition can be found in The Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts, no. 148 (1916). But Lewis is referring to The Royal Academy Illustrated (1916) which contains photographs of most of the paintings mentioned here.

62 Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales for the Modern Reader, prepared and edited by A. Burrell, Everyman’s Library (1908).

63 Le Roman de Tristan et Iseut, Traduit et Restauré par Joseph Bédier, Préface de Gaston Paris (Paris [1900]).

64 Milton, Paradise Lost, IX, 27-8.

65 Charles Kingsley, Westward Ho! (1855).

66 Diana Vernon and Rashleigh are characters in Rob Roy.

67 Warnie was on leave, and at Little Lea, 19-25 May.

68 Punch, vol. CL (12 April 1916), p. 252.

69 Mr Lewis had probably been reading William Flavelle Monypenny’s The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, 6 vols. (1910-20).

70 Rob Roy, ch. XXXIV.

71 John Dryden (1631-1700), so called both for his writings and for the fact that he was the first Poet Laureate to be officially so designated.

72 William De Morgan, Alice-for-Short (1907).

73 Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865).

74 The Canterbury Tales, 2797.

75 ibid., 2808.

76 La Chanson de Roland, Traduction Nouvelle D’Après les Textes Originaux [1911].

77 Beowulf, a poem in Old English generally dated to the eighth century and surviving in a 10th century manuscript. It tells the story of the Geatish hero, Beowulf, and is the most important poem in Old English.

78 Algernon Blackwood, John Silence: Physician Extraordinary (1908).

79 The phrase is from Maurice Maeterlinck’s ‘L’Intelligence des Fleurs’, which Lewis found in his Morceaux Choisis, with an Introduction by Georgette Leblanc (Paris, 1911), p. 181.

80 George Bernard Shaw, Love Among the Artists, Constable’s 1/- Series (1914).

81 L’Orfeo, an opera by Luigi Rossi, was first performed in 1647.

82 The passage occurs in the ‘Introductory Narration’ of Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater (enlarged edition, 1856).

83 William Morris, The Life and Death of Jason (1867).

84 Sir Philip Sidney, The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia (1590).

85 The Odes of Pindar, including the Principal Fragments, with an introduction and an English translation by Sir John Edwin Sandys, Loeb Classical Library (1915).

86 Beowulf, translated by William Morris and A.J. Wyatt (1892).

87 ‘Flaxen-haired girl’. Lewis was thinking of the prelude by Claude Debussy, ‘La Fille aux cheveux de lin’.

88 Sidney, Arcadia, Bk. I, ch. 2.

89 James Stephens, The Crock of Gold (1912).

90 Sidney, Arcadia, Bk. I, ch. 1.

91 The picture was by Hilda Hechle.

92 In his story The Quest of Bleheris.

93 Percy Bysshe Shelley, ‘To—: One word is too often profaned’ (1824).

94 Milton, Paradise Lost, III, 45: ‘But cloud instead and ever-during dark’.

95 The Times Literary Supplement (22 June 1916), pp. 1-2.

96 This was Sir William Quartus Ewart (1844-1919) of Glenmachan House. See The Ewart Family in the Biographical Appendix.

97 Sidney, Arcadia, Bk. II, ch. 4.

98 Heathcliff is the central figure in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.

99 ‘The thing to do if the worst happens.’

100 A character (‘Lord High Everything Else’) in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado.

101 ‘Dick’ who had been ‘safely wounded’ in France is Richard Lewis (1890-), eldest son of Joseph Lewis (1856-1908), and thus Albert’s nephew. He joined the Sports Battalion in 1914 and finished the war as a company sergeant major, with a Distinguished Conduct Medal.

102 Matthew 20:12: ‘These last have wrought but one hour, and thou has made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden and heat of the day.’

103 Lord Kitchener, Secretary of State for War, was in the British cruiser, the Hampshire, on the way to Russia when on 5 June it was sunk by a German submarine. Kitchener was killed.

104 The phrase ‘De mortuis nil nisi bonum’ (‘Speak not evil of the dead’) is originally a Greek expression ascribed to Chilon, a Spartan ephor of the sixth century BC. It is not known who first translated the original Greek into the proverbial Latin that we have.

105 From Felix Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah, first performed in 1846.

106 Shakespeare, King Lear, III, iii, 21: ‘O! That way madness lies; let me shun that.’

107 Luke 10:41.

108 Apollonius Rhodius (c. 295-215 BC), Argonautica.

109 William Makepeace Thackeray, The History of Pendennis (1849-50).

110 Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe (1819), ch. XXI.

111 Aubrey Vincent Beardsley (1872-98).

112 Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree (1872).

113 ‘The Magic Flute’ (unsigned), The Times Literary Supplement (29 June 1916), pp. 1-2.

114 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute was first performed in 1791.

115 Tristan and Isolde, an opera by Richard Wagner, was first performed in 1865.

116 Albert’s brother William, with his wife and daughter, were proposing a visit. See The Lewis Family in the Biographical Appendix.

117 Since the beginning of the war, the Ulster Volunteer Force had been gathering momentum, and they had now forced the War Department to accept them as an integral part of the British army

118 He was referring to Robert Bridges’ ‘Ode on the Tercentenary Commemoration of Shakespeare’, The Times Literary Supplement (6 July 1916), p. 319.

119 Gilbert and Sullivan, Patience, Act I. It is Patience who says: ‘Well, it seems to me to be nonsense.’

120 2 Kings 5:18.

121 Shakespeare’s Comedy of Twelfth Night, with illustrations by W.H. Robinson [1908].

122 William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (1601), I, i, 14.

123 The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, modernized and edited by A.W. Pollard (1900).

124 Milton, Paradise Lost, II, 662.

125 [Valdemar Adolph Thisted], Letters from Hell, Given in English by Julie Sutter, with a Preface by George MacDonald (Richard Bentley & Son 1885; reprinted by Macmillan, 1911). This curious book was first published in Denmark in 1866, and later translated into German. Julie Sutter’s English translation of 1885 was made from the German version. Who knows? the book may have played some part, years later, in the genesis of Lewis’s Screwtape Letters