Читать книгу Collected Letters Volume One: Family Letters 1905–1931 - Клайв Льюис, Клайв Стейплз Льюис, Walter Hooper - Страница 9

The year began with anxiety about the entrance examination to Sandhurst that Warnie had taken in November. But more than that was at stake. Albert was worried about what his son could do with his life, and this had been a question he put to Mr Kirkpatrick more than once. After tutoring him for four months, in preparation for Sandhurst, Mr Kirkpatrick wrote to Albert on 18 December 1913, saying:

You ask me as to his abilities. They seem to be good enough. But observe, a question of that nature cannot be answered in the abstract, for the will power, the moral element is involved. You never know what you can do until you try, and very few try unless they have to. Warren had a nice easy time, but no more so than the other fellows he associated with, many of whom were so well off that it did not matter from the economic point of view if they ever did anything or not. Years of association with such boys must have an effect in modifying the outlook. I do not see anything wrong with Warren apart from this slack, easy going quality. He has been blessed by Nature with two of her best gifts–good health and good nature. But it is too late now to make him interested in knowledge. The day for that has gone by. What he needs now is to be at work of some kind, and as soon as possible. I trust there can be little doubt of his passing, and if so, he should go to Sandhurst at once. The life may not be too strenuous, but it will be strenuous enough for him. The mere fact that he has set his mind on it is most important, and I think the army is now no bed of ease. Is he adapted for the life and will he succeed? These are questions very hard to answer. He does not want to go into any business, and dislikes exertion, drudgery, push and all the rest of it. He will probably discover that he cannot escape these things, even in the army. I should like to see a little more ambition in his composition–that is the main defect; but something of the kind may come in time. I have warned him that his present ideas may not be his ideas when he is a little older–a hard saying for a boy of course. (LP IV: 118-19)

On 9 January the Civil Service Commissioners published the results of the November examinations, and the Lewises were elated to learn that Warnie passed 21st out of 201 successful candidates for Sandhurst. The first 25 candidates were awarded ‘Prize Cadetships’ which secured them admission to the College at half fees, and a grant of £50 on obtaining a commission. On 3 February Warnie and Jack crossed, Warnie to the Royal Military College, Camberley, Surrey, for the first time, and Jack back to Malvern.

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 130-1):

Gt. Malvern,

Sunday.

7th Feb. [1914]

My dear P.,

Thanks for the cutting which has been read with great interest. In addition to the natural unpleasantness of crossing on a bad night, I am annoyed at having broken my record, as I was sea sick on Tuesday for the first time in my life. It is not a pleasant experience. W. was very ill too, which is strange, as we both thought to have got over that danger.

The rest of the journey to Malvern was pleasant enough, and on my arrival I was pleased to find that Hardman and Quennel¹ had moved into the new study, which is a great success. Like somebody’s cocoa, it is ‘grateful and comforting’. So far, to my surprise, the weather has been quite mild and springlike, so I hope to get rid of the cold I had when I left home.

Smugy, I am sorry to say, waxed humorous over my illness, observing in that hoarse whisper of his that I must be ‘a very delicate flower’. He must be excused of course, as the opportunity was too good for him to miss. I suppose it is a priviledge of old age. Otherwise he has been very pleasant, almost effusive, which is an unusual state of affairs with him.

I find there are even less than eight weeks more this term, which of course is good news for both of us. Quennel has already disappeared from the arena with a cold and an ear ache. We hear to our inexpressible joy that the good matron is leaving this term. More than we dared to hope. And, in considering about future possibles, it is a comfort to know that whatever happens, we can’t get anything worse.²

There must be a lot of talk at home about the Greeves affair. What was the dinner like? When you write be sure and tell me all the latest developments. ‘The case’, as Sherlock Holmes would say, ‘is not devoid of interest.’

What is W’s address? I know it is Camberley, but there are a lot of codotta about companies and so forth, are there not?

I am afraid I must again ‘bite your ear’ for ten shillings. An unexpected outrage has occurred. A tax of five shillings a head is being levied for the Old Boy’s leaving present, and another five for that of the James. I consider this rather stiff, but I am afraid it must be done. Please send it as soon as possible. I suppose the hat will be going round for various leaving presents all through this term. Another of the fees one has to pay for the benefit of a Public School education. But I think these places are doomed. Books like ‘The Horrovians’ form the thin end of the wedge.³ It will end in a terrible debacle. I must stop now.

your loving

son Jack.

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 137-8):

[Malvern College]

Postmark: 16 February 1914

My dear Papy,

Thanks very much indeed for the unexpected donation and also for the exacted fund. An excellent thing–money’ as an old friend of ours is wont to observe.

Although others at Malvern have proved wanting in perspicacity with regard to Warnie’s brilliant successes, I was glad to see that Smugy was free from the general reproach. He lost no time in congratulating me warmly, and asking me to convey all the appropriate remarks to W. in my next letter. Such things are perhaps not great acts of kindness. But they serve to mark the difference between those who care for their old pupils and those who do not. Indeed the more I see of that remarkable old man, the more I like and admire him. I wish you knew him. If ever you come to visit Malvern again, you must not leave without making his acquaintance.

This week he has set us a job at which I hope to be able to do something. The alternatives were,

1 poem in imitation of Horace asking a friend to stay with you at the most beautiful spot you know.

2 A picture of a specified scene from Sophocles.

3 An original ghost story.

As you have probably guessed, I chose the first. I invited an imaginary friend to stay at Castlerock. As that would be impossible in verse I changed it to Moville, which is a little village near the former, as you remember. I treated the cliffs, seas, etc. at some length, and have taken pains over it. It is to be shown up tomorrow, and I hope it will be a success. I have written again in the metre of Locksley Hall; it is to be hoped that Smugy will not think that this shows a lack of invention or variety. If he does, I shall point out that some people like Pope and Addison wrote all their poems in the same metre. But of course Horace was a greater man than either of those. However, after a lot of thinking I came to the conclusion that no other metre would do as well. Horace is really impossible to translate: but I think we can imitate him in tolerable style. Everything so far is very pleasant in the Upper V.

How can people advocate a ‘modern’ education? What could be better or more enjoyable than reading the greatest masterpieces of all time, under a man who has made them part of himself? And against this some are foolish enough to oppose algebra and French verbs! The Greek Grammar has not yet put in an appearance. We are turning our attention to Latin where, of course I get on better.

I have seen Dr. Mackay who orders me to continue those annoying breathing exercises and not to play footer. The latter is a great comfort. The other a useful annoyance.

By the way I find I need another coat here. The present one is getting, not shabby, but tired looking, and the other is too small. Could you get Cummings to make me a new black coat to exactly the same measurements as the last. Only three buttons. Or, if it be more convenient, is there an old one of W’s that would do?

Hichens has been down at the Sanatorium and has just come back. On a walk today I met Tubbs who asked me to go up to Cherbourg tomorrow. I think I shall.

your loving

son Jack.

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 152):

[Malvern College]

Postmark: 18 March 1914

My dear Papy,

Please excuse my delay in answering your letter. But I have had no time for any of my private affairs for all this week. I think that your criticism on the report are perfectly just; but I would like to remind you that not only does this persecution get harder to bear as time goes on, but that it is actually getting more severe. As for the work indeed, things are now much brighter, and I have been getting on all right since half term.

But, out of school, life gets more and more dreary; all the prefects detest me and lose no opportunity of venting their spite. Today, for not being able to find a cap which one gentleman wanted, I have been sentenced to clean his boots every day after breakfast for a week. It is after breakfast that the form goes through their translation together. From this I am cut off. When I asked if I might clean them in the evening (an arrangement which you observe would have made no difference to him), I received a refusal, strengthened by being kicked downstairs.

So we go on. These brutes of illiterate, ill-managed English prefects are always watching for an opportunity to drop upon you. There is no escape from them, night or day. There is some consolation in knowing that every one else is in the same box: all my friends too, are utterly miserable and tired of life. Perhaps you ask why we don’t complain to the Old Boy. Sometimes a poor creature, driven wild by injustice and oppression, does try it. The Old Boy of course does his best: but what is the result? The prefects return to the persecution of the boy with renewed vigour. The place is systematically made uninhabitable for him, and he usually leaves. So that way is barred.

Please take me out of this as soon as possible but don’t, whatever you do, write to the James or the Old Boy, as that would only make matters worse. Thank goodness there are only 2 weeks more; that must be our wee bit of ‘silver lining’. You can’t think how I’m longing to get back to you and Leeborough again. See and keep quite well yourself.

your loving

son Jack.

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 155):

[Malvern College]

Postmark: 22 March 1914

My dear Papy,

What a good thing the police did not turn up to arrest Craig.⁴ If they had, I suppose you would be in the thick of it now.

No: I think I had better wait till the Tuesday and attend the House Supper. Not that I want to of course, but Maxwell and all the other Irish boys are waiting as it is Jimmy’s last term, and you can’t very well go early this time. So please book the berth for that night.

In common justice I feel that I ought to correct the notion which, very naturally, I have given you of Hichens. It is only fair to say that he is always ready to do anything he can for me or for anyone else. But the truth of the matter is that, though nominally head of the house, he has to mind his P’s and Q’s very carefully. The real head of the house is a splendid physical animal called Browning, who is one of the worst cads I have ever met. But he certainly has got ‘guts’ and bends the other prefects to his will with a rod of iron. They are all afraid of him. But Hichens, although neither clever or strong minded, is a kindly and gentlemanly sort of person. I have no complaints against him. But we are now so near the end of the term that I am beginning to take a philosophical view of things: all will soon be over.

Although the papers are full of it, the people here don’t seem to grasp the Ulster situation very much: one person asked me this morning if it was for Home Rule or against it that the volunteers were being formed.

Last night we had a lecture about Russia which was quite interesting.

your loving

son Jack.

Jack arrived at Little Lea on 25 March. His father, knowing how desperately unhappy he was at Malvern, was already in correspondence with Warnie about the matter. ‘Your news about Jack is unpleasant,’ Warnie said on 23 March,

but to me at least, not unexpected: from the moment he first came home and told me his opinion of the Coll., I was afraid it could only be a matter of time until he made the place too hot to hold him. I remember asking if it was not a splendid feeling at the end of a house match when you realised that your own house had won: “I saw a lot of boys throwing their caps in the air and making unpleasant noises: yes, I suppose it is an interesting study”…I had an idea that Malvern would weave its influence round Jacks as it did around me, and give him four very happy years and memories and friendships which he would carry with him to the grave…I am all in favour of sending him to Kirk. There would be no one there except Mr and Mrs K for him to talk to, and he could amuse himself by detonating his little stock of cheap intellectual fireworks under old K’s nose. (LP IV: 156-7)

Albert replied on 29 March:

I honestly confess that knowing Jack’s mind and character, I am not greatly surprised to find him and a Public School unsuited to one another. In saying that I blame neither the one nor the other. He is simply out of his proper environment, and would possibly wither and decay rather than grow if kept in such surroundings…What is to be done? For a boy like Jacks to spend the next three or four years alone with an old man like Kirk is almost certain to strengthen the very faults that are strongest in his disposition. He will make no acquaintances. He will see few people and he will grow more into a hermit than ever. The position is a difficult one and gives me many anxious hours. (LP IV: 160)

Albert asked Mr Kirkpatrick what he advised, and in his letter of 17 April he suggested that he send Jack back to Campbell College in Belfast. ‘The Campbell College is at your door,’ he said. ‘If he went there, he would be in contact with you, which ought surely to count for much at this period of growth…It is very kind of you to think of sending him to me, but do you not think it a little premature?’ (LP IV: 165). Mr Lewis persisted, almost begging Mr Kirkpatrick to accept him. ‘If he can hold on through this summer,’ Mr Kirkpatrick replied on 30 April, ‘I hope I shall be ready (if I am spared) to receive him in the autumn, if you are still in the same mind then. And here let me say that I feel almost overwhelmed by the compliment to myself personally which your letter expresses. To have been the teacher of the father and his two sons is surely a unique experience’ (LP IV: 167). Although Jack didn’t want to go back to Malvern for even one more term, Mr Lewis got him to agree to it as an ‘experiment’. If it became too bad, he would leave.

Sometime in mid-April, while this debate was going on, Jack came to know his ‘First Friend’. ‘His name was Arthur [Greeves]’ he wrote in SBJ VIII,

and he was my brother’s exact contemporary; he and I had been at Campbell together though we never met…I received a message saying that Arthur was in bed, convalescent, and would welcome a visit. I can’t remember what led me to accept this invitation, but for some reason I did.

I found Arthur sitting up in bed. On the table beside him lay a copy of Myths of the Norsemen.⁵

‘Do you like that?’ said I.

‘Do you like that?’ said he.

Next moment the book was in our hands, our heads were bent close together, we were pointing, quoting, talking–soon almost shouting–discovering in a torrent of questions that we liked not only the same thing, but the same parts of it and in the same way…Many thousands of people have had the experience of finding the first friend, and it is none the less a wonder; as great a wonder…as first love, or even a greater. I had been so far from thinking such a friend possible that I had never even longed for one; no more than I longed to be King of England.

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 169-70):

[Malvern College]

Postmark: 3 May 1914

My dear Papy,

I suppose, when I come to think of the matter, it was rather foolish of me to write and ask for ‘a coat’, without specifying what kind. One is apt to imagine at times that the person to whom you speak can keep up with your thoughts, whether they are expressed or not. What I want is a common or garden jacket coat, same measurements as the last, and with not more than three buttons on the front.

There are now only some five weeks more. Thank goodness!! For to tell the truth, Malvern is hardly the place for a long stay. I think it would be as well to stick to our original plan of leaving at the end of the term. It is rather heavy going; the ceaseless round of fagging, hunting for clothes and books that have been ‘borrowed’, and other jobs that have to be done in what is euphemistically known as your ‘spare time’, gets very trying. It is literally true that from the time you get up in the morning till the time you go to bed at night, you have not a moment to spare.

And the worst of it all seems to be that I am not getting on too well in form. It’s discouraging. Whether it is that I haven’t time to do it, or that I’m losing my mental faculties, or the fact that it is getting harder, I don’t know: but the fact remains that things aren’t as they should be. Goodness knows, I work as hard as I can. But it’s all uphill. For instance, if you are hoping to do some of your surplus work in the interval between breakfast and morning school, it is very hard to have to give up that time to cleaning boots for some great big brute of a prefect at the bottom of the school. Then of course, as all your arrangements have been thrown out of joint, you don’t know the lesson. And you can’t give Smugy the real explanation. My chief dread is that he may get a bad impression, and I prize his opinion as much as that of any one. Then again, the whole atmosphere of the place is so brutal and unsavoury. In one word, it won’t do.

Of course this is no new discovery. We both agreed last holidays that it was only an experiment, and I am now giving the result of that experiment. There is no need for you to worry or to do anything other than we have already thought of. But I consider it better to let you know straight away that this place is a failure, than to leave the botch over until it is irreparable. I suppose Kirk’s is the best place for me. At any rate one of these ‘English Public Schools’, so famed in song and story, is not. To get on well at one of these, one needs to have a constitution of iron, a hide so thick that no insult will penetrate it, a brain that will never tire, and an intelligence able and ready to cope with the sharp gentlemen who surround you.

But these places are doomed. Books like the ‘Harrovians’ are the thin end of the wedge: and I don’t mind saying that if you came back in a couple of hundred years, there would be no Public Schools left. That is a sort of consolation: for, among other things, one learns here a power of hating with an almost incredible intensity. However, I suppose this sort of education is found to be suitable for some people. But on others it comes rather hard.

To turn to a brighter topic, I am very pleased to hear that W. is getting on well at Sandhurst. His letters to me are very cheerful, and at the same time more serious than some of his communications have been. All these facts point in the right direction.

In the mean time, how are things in the ancient and honourable city of Belfast? Perhaps all this unpleasantness in a foreign land has its use, in that it teaches one to love home and things connected with home all the more, by contrast. I suppose the aggravation of the social nuisance, which always accompanies Xmas has now died down. And what are the attractions at the popular houses of entertainment? Among other things that I want to know, has the great fire mystery been solved yet? It destroys my mental picture of Leeborough if I am not sure whether there still be a wall between the hall and the study or not. However, I am glad to say that I shall be able to see the whole thing for myself at no very distant date.

It is now half term, and there are only four or five weeks more. They will not be long in the going. I wonder is there any truth in the idea that a wise man can be equally happy in any circumstances. It suddenly struck me the other day that if you could imagine you were at home during the term, it would be just as good as the reality.

your loving

son Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 173-4):

[Malvern College]

Postmark: 17 May 1914

My dear P.,

I must really apologise elaborately and profusely for having left you letterless this week: but the fact is that this has been my first opportunity.

First of all, you will be interested to learn that our friend Browning has not, as he anticipated, been raised from the position of House Pre. to that of School Pre. Instead, a humble and inoffensive person named Parker⁶ has been placed above him; at which you may well imagine his chagrin and my delight.

The new headmaster⁷ has created a good impression here already by making the servants clean our boots–thereby abolishing the most obnoxious source of fagging. So far he has spoken very little indeed, but when he speaks it is in a pleasant voice and in good English. He wastes no time. All this shapes very well, although (thank goodness) I shall not see much of his career.

Smugy’s wit on my late return did not exercise itself in my presence. But on the first day, as I am told, he expressed a fear lest I had been ‘killed in the war’. Ah, well! These people will soon learn that war is not a subject for joking; so for that shall we too.

The worst part of the summer term is the fact that we have to keep out of doors nearly all our time; but here one notices the great advantage of being in the Upper School, and therefore allowed to go into the Grundy Library at all hours of the day–it proves a great refuge when the ‘house’ is out of bounds.⁸

I have received a letter from Arthur Greeves. Intimate to him the fact that a suitable reply is being composed at our leisure. Note the royal plural. Well, it’s a good thing that two weeks at any rate have gone. How are the ‘rheumatics’ keeping? I suppose by this time you are in the depths of the house cleaning ceremony: have the study and hall been knocked into one, or any other funny thing happened?

This term in the Grundy I have discovered a new poet whom I must get, Yeats. I never read any of his works before, and both what he says and the way he says it, please me immensely. Do you know him or care for him at all?

Just one bit of ‘Kodotto’ before we stop. In the study or in your dressing room (not mine), you will find a little black book of Warnie’s, a Greek Testament. I should be very glad if you would send it here as soon as possible.

your loving

son Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 179-80):

[Malvern College]

Postmark: 31 May 1914

My dear Papy,

Many apologies again for these same ‘epistolary shortcomings’. But the days this term are so very full, and are spent so much out of doors that it is very hard to polish off the weekly letter with anything like regularity.

What a nuisance that old arm is to be sure. However, I expect that when the fine weather sets in it will improve. I am sorry that in asking you to procure my Attic pentateuch I was compelling you to embark upon a voyage at once perilous and disagreeable and arduous (Johnsonese again). I hope that by the time this letter reaches you, the study wall will have been replaced and the stately hall of Leeborough will smile upon guest and inhabitant with its pristine splendour and hospitality. Of course in restoring the ‘main library’ you are careful to alter the appearance of the room as little as possible. It would be a pity if I came home to a strange house. In the meantime I hope that the small library has been allowed to remain untouched?

This week I am glad to say that the Greek grammar has been going a good deal better; I hope this will continue, as it would be a pleasure to secure a good report of these people before I left. Happily Browning has been ill at the Sanatorium since last Monday, which has kept him out of mischief for one week at least. Last week I got out of the library the works of our present poet laureate, Bridges, who did not impress me a bit;⁹ but I have now struck better ground in Charlotte Bronte’s ‘Wuthering Heights’,¹⁰ which although melodramatic like all her books, shapes very well indeed.

Before I close I must request you to forward a little of the ‘ready’ as owing to exorbitant subscriptions, fines, and the expenses of the summer term, our whole study has run out of cash. As long as one of us was flush the other two could live upon him, but when all three are in this condition it is impossible.

I hope that your arm will not remain ‘hors de combat’ very long.

your loving

son Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W/LP IV: 180-1):

[Malvern College

5 June 1914]

Dear Arthur,

I really must apologize for having kept such a long and unjustifiable–silence. But the readiest means of mending that fault are those of writing fully and at once–which I now propose to do. To begin at the beginning, you had hardly been outside Little Lea for twenty minutes when a chance of not going back seemed to be held out to me, only, as you may guess, to be snatched away again. When we came to pack up my last few belongings, what should happen but that no key was to be found for my trunk! High and low we searched, but not a sign of it. My father was in despair: how was I to go back? How long would it take to have a new lock fitted? For a few moments I had a wild hope of staying at home. What was my disgust, when, almost at the last moment, Annie¹¹ turned up with the required artical, and off I had to go!

Since then, I have lived or existed as one does at School. How dreary it all is! I could make some shift to put up with the work, the discomfort, and the school feeding: such inconveniences are only to be expected. But what irritates me more than anything else is the absolute lack of appreciation of anything like music or books which prevails among the people whom I am forced to call my companions. Can you imagine what it is like to live for twelve weeks among boys whose thoughts never rise above the dull daily round of cricket and work and eating? But I must not complain like this, I suppose. Malvern has its good points. It teaches one to appreciate home, and to despise that sort of lifelessness. If I had never seen the horrible spectacle which these coarse, brainless English schoolboys present, there might be a danger of my sometimes becoming like that myself. But, as it is, I have had warning enough for a lifetime. Another good point about Malvern is the Library, which is one of the best-stocked I have ever been in–not that anyone but myself and two or three others care twopence about it, of course! I have here discovered an author exactly after my own heart, whom I am sure you would delight in, W.B. Yeats. He writes plays and poems of rare spirit and beauty about our old Irish mythology. I must really get my father to buy his books when I come home. His works have all got that strange, eerie feeling about them, of which we are both proffessed admirers. I must get hold of them, certainly.

You can hardly tell how glad I was to hear that you were learning theory. It is a positive shame that you should go about with all those lofty strains running in your head, and yet never set pen to paper to perpetuate them. Of course, take the ‘Loki Bound’ MS.¹² over to Bernagh,¹³ anytime you feel inclined to compose a little operatic music. Thank you very much indeed for undertaking the job of the gramaphone. I suppose by this time it is restored to its former condition. It makes me furious to think of your being able to walk about your house and ours and all the beautiful places we know in the country, while I am cooped up in this hot, ugly country of England. Where is your favourite walk? I hope that by this time you are quite recovered and are able to go about freely without fear of injury. County Down must be looking glorious just now: I can just picture the view of the Lough and Cave Hill from beside the Shepard’s Hut. Sometime next holydays, you and I must make a journey up their before breakfast. Have you ever done that? The sunrise over the Holywood Hills, and the fresh stillness of the early morning are well worth the trouble of early rising, I can assure you.

Since I have touched on the subject of health, I must ask a few questions of a disagreeable nature, on a matter which I have very near my heart. I have now had no direct letter from my father for over three weeks, and I hear that he is very ill. I would be very thankful indeed if you would go over and see him sometimes, and try and cheer him up: then you could tell me exactly how he is, and whether what I have heard has been exagerated or not–although I really don’t deserve a reply to this after the shameful way I have treated you with regard to letters. But I feel sure you won’t mind writing just a few lines, to tell me about yourself and family, and the state of various other things, besides my father’s health. As I am sure you are tired by this time of a long and melancholy letter, I will stop.

Yours affectionately

Jack Lewis

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 190-1):

[Malvern College]

Postmark: 22 June 1914

My dear Papy,

Since I last wrote to you, I received, with your knowledge as I gather, a letter from Annie, short and comfortless enough to be sure, but still something to keep me from alarm. The most promising thing about her communication was that she promises me a letter from you at no very distant date. Do not force yourself to write until you feel thoroughly fit–but when you can, let me have a rare budget of news and reflections to compensate for the weeks ‘that the locust hath eaten’.¹⁴ Above all, don’t forget to tell me all about yourself. I will spare you the trite expressions of sorrow and hope for your recovery; between those who know each other so well, such remarks are out of place, and I am sure you have had enough of that sort of thing. I should like to encourage you to cheer up if I thought I should have any success in that line; I must at any rate mention one consoling circumstance–namely that it is now half way through this dreary term, and is only five weeks till we shall be together again. This week you will get the report: and I hope and pray, not without confidence, that it will do nothing to add to your discomfort. I think I have now crossed the Rubicon in Greek Grammar, and am now happily arrived at the safe side of it. Mr. Smith [Smugy] has been very kind to me indeed, and I think we shall part friends.

This week I have been reading a most remarkable book which has created a great impression. It is ‘The Upton Letters’,¹⁵ a series of letters from a school master at ‘Upton College’ to a friend whose health confines him in Madeira. They purport to have been actually written on such an occasion and not for publication; and indeed the utter absence of plot, or in some cases even of connection, make this seem to be true, although their wonderful beauty argues against it. But to come to my point: the great revelation of the book is the statement made somewhere that we ‘ought not to write about our actions but about our thoughts’. How wonderfully true. We busy ourselves, you and I, telling each other about the weather and the little trivial happenings of each day, while the thoughts of our hearts, the really great experiences of our selves, are seldom spoken of. Of course this is rather rhetorical and letters written entirely on those lines would tend to become monotonous. But the saying struck me so forcibly at the time that I thought I would mention it to you.

This week the natural course of our life has been torn up as it were, by a cyclone in the form of speech day. I suppose you will be able to read Preston’s speech in the Times, and give your own verdict upon it.¹⁶ For my part, I did not see much merit in it–a few trite maxims, a few of the usual jokes, and that was all. In fact if the truth must be told, Preston is not a big man. He is, as far as I can see, a learned and courtly gentleman of captivating manners, but not the person who can save the ruin of a tottering school. Malvern would seem to be fated by the gods never to secure the right man as her headmaster. It is gratifying for me to think that I may live to see the end of this place. Perhaps that is an ungenerous thought: and I should hesitate to bestow my loathing so heartily on anything, even an inanimate object, if I did not think that it would be a real benefit for the country if this place were suppressed.

At this time of the year especially, one sees how awfully the place misses its mark. The whole of our spare time is given up to the great business of our life–cricket. Cricket is played with intense seriousness, and the players are usually in a very bad temper with themselves and everyone else, owing to the strain put on their minds by such a stupendous affair. Now for me, work is the business of the term: I am tired when I come out of school, and should like some recreation. Unfortunately, I am frankly and desperately bored by the recreations that are forced upon me. And yet it is obvious that one must have compulsory games at school: but if you do, as it seems, they are given this ludicrous preponderance and become for some the absorbing interest of their life, and for others a bogie and an incubus.

I enclose a few verses in imitation of Ovid, which were top of the form last week and well spoken of by Smugy. Do you care for that metre? There are a great many rhymes in it, which makes it difficult; but the thing that I want to learn is ‘to move easily in shackles’ (I wonder who said that? Do you know?)

Before I close I must again make shift to bite the paternal ear; as the 10/-which you were kind enough to send has been absorbed in paying off old debts and buying back for the study things which had been sold in the days of extreme embarrasment. I hope you won’t think this extravagant.

See you take care of yourself, and write as soon as you are able.

your loving

son Jack

The following poem was enclosed with the letter above. The words underlined by ‘Smewgy’ are in capital type, and his remarks are in brackets.

‘Ovid’s “Pars estis pauci”’

(Metre copied from a chorus in Swinburne’s ‘Atalanta in Calydon’)

I. Of the host whom I NAMED As friend, ye alone Dear few!, were ashamed In troubles unknown To leave me deserted; but boldly ye cherished my cause as your own. (Yes.)

II. My thanks shall endure -The poor tribute I paid To a faith that was pure– Till my ashes be laid In the urn; and the Stygian boatmen I seek, an impalpable shade. (Yes, but not Ovid.)

III. But nay! For the days Of a mortal are few; Shall they limit your praise Nay rather to you Each new generation shall offer–if aught be remembered–your due.

IV.

For the lofty frame (hardly scans.)

That my VERSES ENFOLD,

Men still shall acclaim

Thro’ ages untold;

And still shall they speak of your virtue; your honour

they still shall uphold.

(Yes.)

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 192-3):

[Malvern College]

Postmark: 29 June 1914

My dear Papy,

On Friday I got a letter from you for the first time since this trouble, and glad I was to get it. It has been a bad business, but I am glad to see that you are over the worst of it now. Be careful of yourself, and take care that you don’t go back to your ordinary routine until you are thoroughly fit.

My mental picture of home is disturbed to a certain extent by your mention of a fire. Here, we are in the middle of a magnificent summer: day succeeds day with the same cloudless sky and parched earth, and the nights are hot and comfortless. But on the whole, fine weather is agreeable, and has, I think, a certain effect on the spirits. Thank you very much for the money, which will enable ‘the firm’ to live ‘en prince’ until the time of our exile be over, and I return to a lovelier country to lead a happier life.

On the Tuesday of this week an unusual thing happened. Smugy asked myself and another boy in the same form and house, by name Cooper, to motor over with him to a little place called Birchwood in the country, where we had tea at an inn, and took a long delightful walk through fields and woods to a place where we were again picked up by the car, and thus home again. It was indeed very kind of the old man, as I am sure he sees quite enough of us in school hours. We went through a very beautiful piece of country, far, far away to the N. West of the hills where we could never go in an ordinary walk. To me, tired as I was of the flat, plain, and ugly hills of Malvern, this region, with its long masses of rolling hills and valleys, variegated by close mysterious woods and cornfields, together with one or two streams, was an enchanted ground. The Malvern hills loomed as a dark mass not far off the horizon: seen at this distance, they had lost their sharpness of outline, and looked weird and unreal, but very beautiful.

Here, in the middle of all this, we came upon the little cottage which used to be the summer resort of Elgar,¹⁷ the composer, formerly an intimate friend of Smugy’s. The latter told us that Elgar used to say he was able to read a musical score in his hand, and hear in his mind not only the main theme of the music, but also the different instruments and all the side currents of sound. What a wonderful state of mind!

This week I have taken a course of A.C. Benson’s essays, which have impressed me very favourably indeed. Do you know them? He has a clear, simple, but melodious style, second as I think only to Ruskin, and the matter is always suggestive, weighty, and original. He always makes you think, which a book ought to.

your loving

son Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 196-7):

[Malvern College]

6/7/14

My dear Papy,

I was glad to get your letter on Saturday, as I was beginning to grow somewhat anxious about you. I am glad indeed to hear that you are on the mend, and hope that the term ‘mending’ will soon be out of place. So the report has come at last. Though I could have wished for something more effusive, still it is pleasing to note that it is an improvement on the last one, and I hope that the next in its turn will be a proportionate advance. Yes. I think the old man has some regard for me, but, it must be remembered that even if I were to return next winter, I should no longer be under him, as all our form are getting a shove to make way for the influx of new scholarship people.

This week I have enjoyed the doubtful privilege of having two teeth extracted, both of which had been bothering me a good deal off and on this term. The dentist, who is a thoroughly competent official, pronounced his verdict that as they had been tinkered with over and over again, and were now hopelessly rotten, they had better come out. So out they came, with gas, and I think it was a good job.

I am at present engaged in reading Newman’s poems:¹⁸ do you know them at all? They are very, very delicate and pretty, and are like nothing more than one of those valuable painted Chinese vases which a touch would destroy. I must except from this criticism the ‘Dream of Gerontius’,¹⁹ which is very strongly written. But the rest are almost too delicate for my taste: it is a kind of beauty that I can’t very much appreciate.

We have had two thunderstorms this week, and their combined efforts have left the ground pretty much under water, which is a great relief, as it puts an end to that eternal cricket. I wonder which is the more fatiguing, being made to play oneself, or watching others play it? We have plenty of both here, and both are compulsory.

But to turn to a better theme, do you realise that there is barely a month more this term; and I am already beginning to look forward to the end of it. That, I think, is one of the really priceless pleasures of youth–this joy of home coming, the gradual approach to the familiar surroundings etc.–as an old friend of ours once said on another subject, ‘it can’t be beat’.

Which reminds me, has Arthur got the gramophone mended yet?

your loving

son Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 197-8):

[Malvern College]

Postmark: 13 July 1914

My dear Papy,

Although there has been no letter this week, I do hope that you have not had a relapse or anything, and that you are getting on all right.

This week we have had a Repton match here, and other things which must now be told. A nice impression truly these people will take back of Malvern and the Malvernians! One evening, during the game called ‘crockets’ (which is a kind of impromptu cricket played with soft balls on the stretch of gravel outside S.H.), two real knuts from Repton strolled up, and began watching at a distance: this is what they saw. Browning, whose ball had been hit over into Mr. Preston’s garden, turned round to an inoffensive person called Hamley,²⁰ who has just been made a prefect, and demanded the latter’s ball. This request was very naturally refused: whereupon our friend Browning proceeds to take it by force, and with many blows and oaths, succeeded in ejecting the other down the bank. Then, noticing the not unnatural mirth of the Reptonians at the sight of two public school prefects fighting and rolling in the mud like street boys, he turned round and told them in terms which I cannot reproduce, ‘not to grin at him’, with a great emphasis on the last word.

So this is our public school dignity, politeness and hospitality which we are always hearing about! These are the institutions that all other civilised countries envy us for, and would imitate if they could. Bah! I for one, will be glad to be rid of them all, and would like to see the day when they are abolished. But as for this Browning, perhaps we judged him too harshly. It is very true that we never know the data for any case but our own. I hear he is not happy at home: so that, although it may be that he is such a beast that he cannot be well treated, yet on the other hand it may be that he has been made into a beast. One never knows.

Last week we had an essay on the difference between Genius and Talent, and mine has been ‘sent up for good’, the ceremony which I told you of.²¹ Only three weeks more now.

your loving

son Jacks

On Saturday, 19 September 1914 Jack arrived at Great Bookham to be met at the station by the man he’d heard about all his life, W.T. Kirkpatrick. ‘I came prepared,’ he later wrote in SBJ IX,

to endure a perpetual luke-warm shower bath of sentimentality. That was the price I was ready to pay for the infinite blessedness of escaping school…One story of my father’s, in particular, gave me the most embarrassing forebodings. He had loved to tell how once at Lurgan when he was in some kind of trouble or difficulty, the Old Knock, or the dear Old Knock, had drawn him aside and there ‘quietly and naturally’ slid his arm round him and rubbed his dear old whiskers against my father’s youthful cheek and whispered a few words of comfort…And here was Bookham at last, and there was the arch-sentimentalist himself waiting to meet me…He was over six feet tall, very shabbily dressed…lean as a rake, and immensely muscular. His wrinkling face seemed to consist entirely of muscles, so far as it was visible; for he wore moustache and side whiskers with a clean-shaven chin like Emperor Franz Joseph. The whiskers, you will understand, concerned me very much at that moment. My cheek tingled in anticipation…

Apparently, however, the old man was holding his fire. We shook hands, and though his grip was like iron pincers it was not lingering. A few minutes later we were walking away from the station. ‘You are now,’ said Kirk, ‘proceeding along the principal artery between Great and Little Bookham.’ I stole a glance at him. Was this geographical exordium a heavy joke? Or was he trying to conceal his emotions? His face, however, showed only an inflexible gravity. I began to ‘make conversation in the deplorable manner which I had acquired at those evening parties and indeed found increasingly necessary to use with my father. I said I was surprised at the ‘scenery’ of Surrey; it was much ‘wilder’ than I had expected.

‘Stop!’ shouted Kirk with a suddenness that made me jump. ‘What do you mean by wildness and what grounds had you for not expecting it?’ I replied I don’t know what, still ‘making conversation. As answer after answer was torn to shreds it at last dawned upon me that he really wanted to know. He was not making conversation, nor joking, nor snubbing me; he wanted to know. I was stung into attempting a real answer. A few passes sufficed to show that I had no clear and distinct idea corresponding to the word ‘wildness’, and that, in so far as I had any idea at all, ‘wildness’ was a singularly inept word. ‘Do you not see, then,’ concluded the Great Knock, ‘that your remark was meaningless?’…By this time our acquaintance had lasted about three and a half minutes; but the tone set by this first conversation was preserved without a single break during all the years I spent at Bookham…If ever a man came near to being a purely logical entity, that man was Kirk…Some boys would not have liked it; to me it was red beef and strong beer.

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 212):

[Gastons,

Great Bookham,

Surrey]

Sept. 21st [1914]

My dear Papy,

I arrived, as you heard by the telegram, at Great Bookham in perfect safety and with all my effects. Today is Monday and you must excuse my not writing yesterday as some friends of Mine Host’s called in the afternoon when I had intended to do this.

Need I say how thoroughly satisfied I am with Bookham, Gastons, and their inhabitants. You already know all about Kirk–more than I do probably–and W. has spoken of Mrs. K., whom I like exceedingly.

The country is absolutely glorious. I took my first tour of exploration this afternoon, and went through the outskirts of a large forest. One was strongly reminded of ‘As you like it’.²² The village is one such as I have often read of, but never before seen. The little row of red roofed cottages, the old inn, and the church dating from the Conquest might all have stepped out of the Vicar of Wakefield.²³ How Arthur would enjoy this place!

Another point of gratification is that I have at last, triumphantly, found a dirtier railway than the Co. Down. (I wonder have you any shares in the London & S. Western?) Kirk’s son,²⁴ who is in a volunteer camp near here called for an hour or so last night. We get the ‘Whig’ here, which gives a touch of home. I hope you are keeping in good health and spirits and letting Tim sleep indoors. Of course there are sewing meetings and all the usual war codotta at Bookham. To finish up–it is a brilliant success.

your loving

son Jack

P.S. Any signs of the photos? J.

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W/LP IV: 212-13):

‘Gastons’

Grt. Bookham.

Surrey. Saturday Sept / 14 26 September 1914]

My dear Arthur,

If it were not that you could answer me with my own argument, I should upbraid you with not having written to me. See to it that you do as soon as you have read this.

And now–what do I think of it? After a week’s trial I have come to the conclusion that I am going to have the time of my life: nevertheless, much as I am enjoying the new arrangement, I feel sure that you would appreciate it even more than I. As for the country, I can hardly describe it. The wide expanse of rolling hill and dale, all thickly wooded with hazel and pine (so different from our bare and balder hills in Down) that is called Surrey, is to me, a great delight. Seen at present, in all the glory of a fine Autumn, it may be better imagined than described. How I wish that I could paint! Then I could carry home a few experiences on paper for my own remembrance and your information. But the village wd. please you even better. I have never seen anything like it outside a book. There is a quaint old inn that might have stepped out of the ‘Vicar of Wakefield’, and a church that dates from before the conquest. But it is no good enumerating things: I cannot convey the impression of perfect restfulness that this place imparts. We have all often read of places that ‘Time has forgotten’–well, Great Bookham is one of these!

I have only just discovered that you put my name in that book.²⁵ If I had seen it earlier I shd. have sent it back. You have no right to be so foolishly generous! However–many, many thanks. When one has set aside the rubbish that H. G. Wells always puts in, there remains a great deal of original, thoughtful and suggestive work in it. The ‘Door in the Wall’, for instance, moved me in a way I can hardly describe! How true it all is: the SEEING ONE walks out into joy and happiness unthinkable, where the dull, senseless eyes of the world see only destruction & death. ‘The Plattner Story’ & ‘Under the Knife’ are the next best: they have given me a great deal of pleasure. I am now engaged in reading ‘Sense & Sensibility’. It is, undoubtedly, one of her best. Do you remember the Palmer family?²⁶

In Greek, I have started to read Homer’s Iliad,²⁷ of which, of course, you must often have heard. Although you don’t know Greek & don’t care for poetry, I cannot resist the temptation of telling you how stirring it is. Those fine, simple, euphonious lines, as they roll on with a roar like that of the ocean, strike a chord in one’s mind that no modern literature approaches. Better or worse it may be: but different it is for certain.

I hope everything went off successfully on the eventful Teusday, and also that you are now recovered from your cold. You know my address: you have no excuse for silence, Sir!! No Philip’s concerts this year at Belfast, I am told.

Yrs. (Expecting a letter)

C. S. Lewis

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 214):

[Gastons]

Monday.

Postmark: 30 September 1914

My dear Papy,

Thanks very much for the two letters which I received all in due course. Yes: I think that will be the best plan about the photos. Only, please send me two copies, as I want to give one to some one else at Malvern.

I am now at the end of my first week at Bookham, and can again tell you that it is everything that can possibly be desired. Both in work and leisure it is of course incomparably beyond any of the arrangements we have tried yet.

This week end an old pupil and friend of Kirk’s was staying with us–one Oswald Smythe, who hies from Bembridge and is about twenty five years of age. Do you know who that would be? We are going on with friend Homer at what–to my ex-Malvernian mind–is a prodigious rate: that is to say we have polished off a book in the first week. At Malvern we always took a term to read a book of that sort of stuff.

Today I did a thing that would have gladdened your heart: walked to Leatherhead (for Bookham does not boast a barber) to get my hair cut. And am now looking like a convict–Yes thanks I have plenty of underclothing, and the cold is a good deal better!

There is a good deal of war fever raging here, as is natural. I am glad to hear that those ‘five righteous’ have been found. But five thousand would be more to the point. What is all the local news? Tell Arthur the next time you see him that I am eagerly expecting a reply to my letter. I suppose the winter has closed in at home by this time: but we are still having quite summer weather here–which I rather resent. Mrs. Kirk plays the piano beautifully, which is one of the great assets of Bookham. There is also a movement on foot to make me learn to play bridge: but I am wriggling as hard as is compatible with manners.

your loving

son Jack

P.S. Who is the ‘Mr. Dods’²⁸ that Kirk mentions?

War had been building up for some time, and it was now imminent. The heir to the Hapsburg empire, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. Linking the assassination to the government of Belgrade, on 23 July Austria despatched to Serbia an ultimatum which could only be answered in two ways: Serbia must become for all practical purposes a conquered province of the Austrian Empire, or it must accept a declaration of war. On 28 July Austria declared war on Serbia, and on 29 July Russia mobilized her south-western army. That same day in London, Winston Churchill proposed to the British Cabinet that the European sovereigns should ‘be brought together for the sake of peace’.²⁹ Germany refused, and on 31 July Russia mobilized against Germany. That same day Britain asked France and Germany to respect Belgian neutrality, to the maintenance of which Britain was committed by a treaty signed in 1839. France agreed to do so, but Germany gave no answer. Then, on 3 August Germany declared war on France. Hitherto Britain had stood aside, but the question of Belgian neutrality raised a problem and on 3 August Britain sent an ultimatum to Berlin demanding there be no attack on Belgium. On 4 August Germany entered Belgium, and that night Britain declared war on Germany. By midnight on 4 August five empires were at war: the Austro-Hungarian Empire against Serbia; the German Empire against France, Britain and Russia; the Russian Empire against Germany and Austria-Hungary; and the British and French Empires against Germany.

Because of war-time needs, Warnie’s training had been accelerated from two years to only nine months. On 1 October he was commissioned a 2nd lieutenant in the Army Service Corps and sent to the base at Aldershot in preparation for being sent to France on 4 November.

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 225-6):

[Gastons]

Monday [5?] Oct./14

My dear Papy,

Thanks very much for the photographs, which I have duly received and studied. They are artistically got up and touched in: in fact everything that could be desired–only, do I really tie my tie like that? Do I really brush my hair like that? Am I really as fat as that? Do I really look so sleepy? However, I suppose that thing in the photo is the one thing I am saddled with for ever and ever, so I had better learn to like it. Isn’t it curious that we know any one else better than we do ourselves? Possibly a merciful delusion.

You ask about our church at Bookham.³⁰ I thought I had mentioned it in my first description of the village. However, at the risk of repetition, you shall be informed. It is of pre-Norman structure, and is, like all these old churches, no particular shape. There are various plates of bronze dedicated by ‘So and so, gentleman, to his beloved ladye who etc., etc.’ The organ is out of tune: the singing execrable. The Vicar is a hard working, sincere and cheerful fellow, but, as Miss Austen would say, of ‘no parts’. It is, in its own way, very, very beautiful. Yes, I go every Sunday.

I wonder did you notice the article on Nietzche in last Sunday’s Times Literary Supplement,³¹ which demonstrates that although we have been told to regard Nietzche as the indirect author of this war, nothing could be farther removed from the spirit and letter of his teaching? It just shows how we can be duped by an ignorant and loud mouthed cheap press. Kirk, who knows something about N., had anticipated that article with us, and is in high glee at seeing the blunder ‘proclaimed on the housetops.’

I am very glad to hear that Warnie has at last safely arrived in that state of bliss, our British Army. What happens to him now, do you know?

The weather here is perfectly ideal: sharp frosts at night, and clear, mild sunshine in the day: this is really the nicest country I have ever seen, outside–of course–Co. Down. The places about here in the woods are alive with pheasants, as the usual shots are at the front: they are so tame that you can come within a few paces of them.

On Saturday the household went over to the famous Boxhill, which however I thought not nearly so pretty as some of the places nearer Gastons.

I can still say that a larger knowledge of our new stunt gives nothing but deeper satisfaction. We have at last struck the real thing in education, in comfort, in pleasure, and in companions. I could almost believe that Malvern had never existed, or was merely a nightmare which I am glad to forget. Paper and time at an end.

yr. loving son,

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W/LP IV: 214-7):

Gt. Bookham

[6 October 1914]

Dear Arthur,

I will begin by answering your questions & then we can get on to more interesting topics. The plot of my would-be tragedy is as follows: (The action is divided into the technical parts of a Grk. tragedy: so:)

I. Prologos.

Loki, alone before Asgard, explains the reason of his quarrel of the gods: ‘he had seen what an injustice the creation of man would be and tried to prevent it! Odin, by his magic had got the better of him, and now holds him as a slave. Odin himself now enters, with bad news. Loki (as is shewn in the dialogue) had persuaded the gods to make the following bargain with the Giant, Fasold: that if F., in one single winter, built a wall round Asgard, the goddess Freya should be given him as his concubine. The work is all but finished: the gods, repenting of the plan, are claiming Loki’s blood.

II. Parodos.

Thor, Freya & the Chorus enter. After a short ode by the latter, Thor complains that Loki, who is always the gods’ enemy has persuaded them to this plan, well knowing that it would come to no good. Loki defends his actions in a very scornful speech, and the two are only kept from blows at the request of Odin & Freya. Odin, though feeling qualms on account of their ancient friendship, agrees to Loki’s being punished if the latter cannot devise some way out of the difficulty by the next day, (when ‘the appointed Winter’ is up). The others then withdraw leaving Loki alone with the Chorus. He has been cringing to Odin up till now, but on his exit bursts out into angry curses.

III. Episode I.

The Chorus pray to the ‘spirits of invocation to help Loki to find a plan. His only desire is to be able to save his own head and plunge the gods into even deeper morasses. A long dialogue ensues between him & the Chorus, the result of which is this plan: that Loki will send a spirit of madness into Fasold’s horse which always accomplishes the greater part of the work. (Vide ‘Myths of the Norsemen). The Chorus agree & Loki sets off to Jarnvid (Ironwood) to instruct the spirit.

IV. Episode II.

It is now quite dark. The Chorus are singing a song of hope & fate, when Fasold enters with his horse, dragging the last great stone. He stops & converses with the Chorus. In the dialogue which follows, the genial, honest, blundering mind of Fasold is laid open: and his frank confession of his fears & hopes for Freya, and his labours, forms a contrast to the subtle intrigues of the gods. At last he decides to move on. He urges the horse: but at that moment the frenzy siezes it: it breaks from its traces & gallops off, kicking its master and leaving him senseless in the snow. Presently he recovers, and after a very sad & indignant accusation of the gods, goes off to mourn ‘his vanished hope’. He cannot now hope to gain the ‘dear prize’ for which ‘he laboured all those months’! The morning is all ready at hand

V. Episode III.

Loki, Thor & Freya return. All are in high spirits, and exult over the success of the plan. To them enters Odin. By the appearance of the god, we guess that something is wrong. On being questioned his explanation (greatly condensed) is this. ‘The gods’ empire rests on treaties. Therefore on honour. When that honour is broken their doom is at hand. Loki has conquered the Giant, how? By Fraud. We have broken faith and must prepare for the twilight of the gods.’ As soon as the general shock has passed off, Thor turns upon Loki and says that he is the cause of all this. Loki, seeing that he has accomplished his design, throws off the mask of humility that he has been wearing, and, confessing that it was all his plan, bursts forth into fearful [cursings?] upon Thor and Odin. Since Loki cannot be killed by any known weapon, Thor purposes to pinion him on an adjacent boulder (etc. Vide ‘Myths of the N’s’) as a punishment. Odin, though without enthusiasm consents, and he is bound. (Thor, Freya, Odin go off).

VI. Exodos.

Loki, bound to the rock, is indulging in a satyric dialogue with the Chorus, when Odin returns. As soon as Loki sees him he bursts into violent abuse. Odin has come to offer him pardon & release: ‘He (Odin,) is a lonely god: men, gods, & giants are all only his own creatures, not his equals & he has no friend–merely a crowd of slaves. Loki, who had been brought forth with & (not by) him by Fate, had supplied one. Will he be reconciled?’ Loki, however, casts his offer back in his teeth, with many taunts. Seeing that they can effect nothing Odin & Chorus withdraw & the tragedy ends.

Such then, in brief, is the skeleton of my poor effort poor indeed in its intrinsic worth, and yet not so poor if you could set it to soul-stirring music. As an opera the parts would be like this.

LOKI	Tenor (?)
ODIN	Baritone
THOR	Basso (of course)
FREYA	Soprano
FASOLD	Basso
LEADER of the CHORUS	Contralto (she has quite a lot to do, here & there)

Of course you would readily see what musical points could be made. Nevertheless I cannot refrain from giving you a few of my ideas. To begin with, Loki’s opening speech would be sombre and eerie,–expressive of the fire-god’s intrigueing soul, and endless hatred. Then (Parados) the first song of the chorus would be bright and tuneful, as a relief to the dramatic duet that precedes it. The next great opportunity for ‘atmospheric’ music comes (Episode I) where the theme of the ‘spirit of madness’ is introduced. You can well imagine what it ought to be like. Then (Episode II) we would have a bluff, swinging ballad for the huge, hearty giant; and of course the ‘madness motive’ again, where the horse breaks lose. Then some ‘Dawn’ music as a prelude to (Episode III) and Odin’s speech about their position! What an opening for majestic & mournful themes. But the real gem would be some inexpressibly sad, yearning little theme, where (Exodos) Odin expresses his eternal loneliness. But enough!, enough! I have let my pen run away with me on so congenial a subject & must try & get back to daily life.

As for my average ‘Bookham’ day, there is not much to tell. Breakfast at 8.0, where I am glad to see good Irish soda-bread on the table begins the day. I then proceed to take the air (we are having some delightful, crisp autumn mornings) till 9.15, when I come in & have the honour of reading that glorious Iliad, which I will not insult with my poor praise. 11-11.15 is a little break, & then we go on with Latin till luncheon, at 1.0. From 1.-5.0, the time is at my own disposal, to read, write or moon about in the golden tinted woods and vallies of this county. 5-7.0, we work again. 7.30, dinner. After that I have the pleasant task of reading a course of English Literature mapped out by Himself.³² Of course, that doesn’t include novels, which I read at other times. I am at present occupied with (as Eng. Lit.) Buckle’s ‘Civilization of England’,³³ and (of my own accord) Ibsen’s plays. Hoping to hear from you soon, with all your views & suggestions for Loki, I am.

Yrs. sincerely

C. S. Lewis

P.S. If you begin composing in earnest you’ll find the libretto in my study upstairs. J.

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 229-39):

[Gastons]

Postmark: 13 October 1914

My dear Papy,

I am astonished to hear that the Glenmachonians³⁴ are still so foolish as to stick to the Russian delusion: as Kirk has pointed out several times, this extraordinary rumour, and the credit paid to it, is a striking illustration of the way in which a mythology grew up in barbarous or semi-barbarous ages. If we, with all our modern knowledge fall into an error so ludicrous and so unfounded, it is hardly to be wondered at if primitive man believed a good deal of nonsense.

Our household has an addition this week in the person of Mrs. K’s theatrical friend Miss MacMullen, who is staying here for a week or ten days. ‘Soul! She’s a boy!’ Altho’ perfectly well she sees fit to travel down to Gastons with a bath chair, a maid, and a bull dog. However, they are the only faults, and they are amusing Kodotta.

This is the most extraordinary place I have ever seen for weather: we have had bright sunshine, frost, and not a spot of rain ever since I arrived. The touch of frost, unaccompanied by any wind to blow the leaves off their branches, has converted the country into a veritable paradise of gold and copper. I have never seen anything like it. Everyone at Bookham is engaged in a conspiracy for ‘getting up’ a cottage for Belgian refugees:³⁵ a noble scheme I admit: carried out however in a typical fussy ‘Parishional’ way. Some of Kirk’s comments are very funny.

Any news from the Colonel?³⁶ When is he off to the front? Did you ever at Lurgan read the 4th Georgic?³⁷ It is the funniest example of the colossal ignorance of a great poet that I know. It’s about bees, and Virgil’s natural history is very quaint: bees, he thinks, are all males: they find the young in the pollen of flowers. They must be soothed by flute playing when anything goes wrong etc., etc.

I hope that your dental troubles are now gone and that you are quite well in other ways (Yes–it is a bad cold Joffer!) I am scanning the horizon for a brown suit. I suppose you have settled down to winter weather and customs by now at home.

your loving

son Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES: (W/LP IV: 220-2)

Wednesday

14 October 1914]

Bookham

My dear Arthur,

Although delighted, as always, to find your letters on my plate, I was very sorry to hear that you were once again laid up: I hope, however, that it is nothing more than a cold, and will soon pass away.

I was very glad to hear your favourable criticism of ‘Loki’ (and I hope it is genuine) and to see that you are taking an interest in it. Of course your supposed difficulty about scoring is a ‘phantasm’. For, in the first place, if we do compose this opera, it will in all probability never have the chance of being played by an orchestra: and, in the second place, if by any chance it were ever to be produced, the job of scoring it would be given–as is customary–to a hireling. Now, as to your budget of tasteful and fascinating suggestions. Your idea of introducing a dance after the exit of Odin etc, is a very good one, altho’ it will occasion some trifling alterations in the text: and, speaking of dances in general, I think that you are quite right in saying that they add a certain finish to both dramatic & operatic works. Indeed, when I was writing them, there were certain lines in the play which I felt would be greatly ‘helped out’ by appropriate movements. Thus the lines

‘The moon already with her silvery glance,–

The hornèd moon that bids the high gods dance’

would suggest some good moonlight music both in motion and orchestra.

Turning to your remarks about illustrations, I must confess that I have often entertained that idea myself; but, thinking that, since you never spoke of it, there was some radical objection on your part, I never liked to suggest it. Now that I am undeceived in that direction, however, need I say that I am delighted with the idea? Your skill with the brush, tho’ by no means superior to your musical abilities, has yet a greater mastery of the technical difficulties. I have only to cast my eyes over the libretto to conjure up a dozen good ideas for illustrations. (1) First of all, the vast, dreary waste of tumbled volcanic rock with Asgard gleaming high above in the background thrown out into sharp relief by the lurid sunset: then in the foreground there is the lithe, crouching figure of Loki, glaring with satanic malignity at the city he purposes to destroy. That is my conception of the Prologos. (2) Then Odin, thundering through the twilit sky on his eight footed steed! (what a picture.) (3) Again, Freya, beautiful, pathetic and terrified making her anguished entreaty for protection. (4) A sombre study of the moonlight choral dance that you so wisely suggested. (5) The love-sick Fasold raging in impotent fury when he discovers that he has been cheated. And (6) last of all, Loki, bound to his rock, glaring up to the frosty stars in calm, imperturbable and deadly hatred! And so on & so on. But you, with your artist’s brain will doubtless think of lots of other openings. I do sincerely hope that this idea will materialise, and that I shall find on my return a whole drawer full of your best.

I am afraid this is rather a ‘Loki’ letter, and I know that I must not expect others to doat on the subject as foolishly as do I. I am going to ask for ‘Myths and legends of the Celtic Race’³⁸ as part of my Xmas box from my father: so that, as soon as I put the finishing touches to ‘Loki Bound’, I can turn my attention to the composition of an Irish drama–or perhaps, this time, a narrative poem.³⁹ The character of Maeve, the mythical warrior Queen of Ireland, will probably furnish me with a dignified & suggestive theme. But, we shall see all in good time.

Mrs Kirkpatrick, the lady of this house, had not played to me at the time of writing my last epistle. But since then she has given me a most delightful hour or so: introducing some of Chopin’s preludes, ‘Chanson Triste’,⁴⁰ Beethoven’s moonlight Sonata,⁴¹ Chopin’s March Funebre,⁴² The Peer Gynt Suite⁴³ & several other of our old favourites. Of course I do not know enough about music to be an authoritative critic, but she seemed to me to play with accuracy, taste & true feeling. So that there is added another source of attraction to Great Bookham. For the value of Mrs K’s music is to me two fold: first it gives me the pleasure that beautiful harmonies well executed must always give: and secondly, the familiar airs carry me back in mind to countless happy afternoons spent together at Bernagh or Little Lea!

Strange indeed is my position, suddenly whirled from a state of abject terrorism, misery and hopelessness at Malvern, to a comfort and prosperity far above the average. If you envy my present situation, you must always remember that after so many years of unhappiness there should be something by way of compensation. All I hope is that there will not come a corresponding depression after this: I never quite trust the ‘Norns’.⁴⁴

I have come to the end now of my time & paper and, I daresay, of your patience. While I remember; it would be as well for you to keep that sketch of the plot of Loki, so that we can refer to it in our correspondence, when necessary.

Yrs. very sincerely

Jack Lewis

P.S. Have the Honeymooners come home from Scotland yet? (J.)⁴⁵

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 232):

[Gastons]

Postmark: 18 October 1914

My dear Papy,

Although fully alive to the gravity of the situation and grateful for the kindness of your suggestion, it was not without a smile that I read your last letter. I hardly think that the siege of Bookham will begin before Xmas, so that I need not come home just yet. And seriously, why not study the lilies of the field?⁴⁶ All your worry and anxiety will not help the war at all: and the truest service that we who are not fighting can do is to conduct our lives in an ordinary way and not yield to panic.

The good ladies of Bookham are now in the highest state of felicity, having secured a formidable family of seven Belgian refugees, which they have duly installed in a cottage selected for the purpose. Luckily the mother of the family speaks French, so that the educated ladies of Bookham can talk to her: but the rest of the family speak nothing but Flemish. Yesterday I went with Mrs. K. to see them: tried my French on the mother and bombarded the others out of a phrase book with subtile converse like ‘Good morning: are you well: we are well: is the child well: it is fine: it is wet: is it wet etc.’ Of course they are not gentlemen; but very respectable and intelligent bourgeois.

Young Kirk was employed at his camp the other day in unloading a train of seriously wounded soldiers from the front: from whom he learned that the newspaper stories of German atrocities (mutilation of nurses, killing wounded etc.) were not in the least exaggerated.

I hope the dental troubles are a thing of the past. I suppose the Scotch Greevous honeymooners have returned by now, and that Arthur is back to work. He tells me that there is some talk of his going to Portrush with Mrs. Greeves,⁴⁷ which I should think was a chilly operation at this time of year.

The Gastonian arrangement continues to give every possible satisfaction that anybody could ask for: and the country is lovelier than ever. The theatrical lady is still here, so that when young Kirk comes down from his camp to spend the week end, we are quite a pleasant sized party. I am off to bed now, so good night.

your loving

son Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W/LP IV: 222-3):

[Gastons

20 October 1914]

My dear Arthur,

Many thanks for the letter, which I hope is becoming a regular ‘institution’, and apologies for my comparative slackness in replying. When I read your description of the boring evening I thought for a while of writing you a letter full of ‘war’–to hear your views afterwards. But, to be serious, what would you? Is the trivial round of family conversation ever worth listening to, whether we are at war or no? I can promise you that it is not at Little Lea and if Bernagh is different it must be an exceptional household. The vast majority of people, too, whom one meets outside the household, have nothing to say that we can be interested in. Their circle of interests is sternly practical, and it is only the few who can talk about the really important things–literature, science, music & art. In fact, this deadly practicalness is so impressed on my mind, that, when I have finished Loki, I am resolved to write a play against it.

The following idea has occurred to me: in Irish mythology the ruling deities are the light & beautiful Shee: but, we are told, before these came, the world was ruled by the Formons, hideous and monstrous oppressors. What are the exact details of the struggle between the two parties I do not know. But it ought to make a good allegorical story, in which the Formons could be taken as typical of the stern, ugly, money grubbing spirit, finally conquered by that of art & beauty, as exemplified by the lovely folk of the Shee. However, of course, this is only a castle in the air.

I sympathize with your difficulty in drawing a horse, as I have often made the attempt in the days when I fancied myself in that line. But of course that counts for nothing: as the easiest of your sketches would be impossible for me. But there are heaps of pictures in which you need not introduce the animal. I hope the music has started in real earnest by now. The longer I stay at this place, the better I like it. Mrs. K., like all good players–including yourself-is lazy and needs a lot of inducement before she performs.

yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 234):

[Gastons 25?

October 1914]

My dear Papy,

You have surpassed yourself. The popular press, of whose reliability the Russian rumour is an example, remarks on the possibility of an invasion: the idea, after being turned over in your mind, appears in your next letter, clothed as ‘it is absolutely certain that he is going to invade England’⁴⁸ Surely, Joffer, this is rather hyperbole? The one thing that Britain can depend upon is her fleet: and in any case Germany has her hands full enough. You will perhaps say that I am living in a fool’s paradise. ‘Maybe thon’. But, providing it only be a paradise is that not preferable to a wise and calculating inferno? Let us have wisdom by all means, so long as it makes us happy: but as soon as it runs against our peace of mind, let us throw it away and ‘carpe diem’.⁴⁹ I often wonder how you came to have such a profound and genuine philosopher for your son, don’t you?

I received and duly posted your letter to the Colonel: though why it should reach him any more easily from Bookham than from Belfast I don’t know. It seems to me outrageous that you can’t get a letter through. I suppose he is still at Aldershot and that they are allowed to receive letters? I think the ‘my bankers’⁵⁰ wheeze is immense. The brother of that Smythe fellow, who was staying here some days ago, has lost his arm and is coming home. It begins to come home to you as a personal element, doesn’t it? At present the only solution which Kirk will allow probable, is the absolute exhaustion of one, or more likely both parties: and that is a revolting prospect, is it not?

Last week I went up to town with Mrs. K. and the theatrical lady to the Coliseum to see the Russian ballet, which was very good: but the rest of the show seemed to me to be neither better nor worse than an average bill at our own old Hippodrome.

I hear from my Malvern correspondent, in the thankfulness of his soul, that it is half term. How different is his lot as he counts up the tardy lapse of hard, dreary, cheerless week after week, to mine: where the weeks slip away unasked and unobserved as at home. I am glad to see that the Captain was mentioned in despatches, and cannot see that there would be anything wrong in congratulating Hope.⁵¹ I am giving up the usual end of the letter tag about Gastons ‘giving all satisfaction’, as you may safely assume that things continue better than I could describe.

your loving

son Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W/LP IV: 233-4):

Gt. Bookham

Wednesday

28 October 1914]

Dear Arthur,

You ask me what a shee is: I reply that there is no such thing as ‘A’ Shee. The word (which, tho’ pronounced as I have spelled it, is properly in Irish spelled ‘Shidhe’) is a collective noun, signifying ‘the fairies’, or the gods,–since, in Irish these powers are identical. The common phraze ‘Banshee’, is derived from ‘Beän Shidhe’ which means ‘a woman of the Shee’: and the gods, as a whole, are often called ‘Aes Shidhe’, or ‘people of the S.’ The resemblance between this word ‘Aes’ and the Norse ‘Aesir’ has often been noted as indicating a common origin for Celtic & Teutonic races. So much for the etymology. But the word has a secondary meaning, developed from the first. It is used to indicate the ‘faery forts’ or dwelling places of the Shee: these are usually subterranean workings, often paved and roofed with stone & showing an advanced stage of civilization. These can be seen in a good many parts of Ireland. Who really built them is uncertain: but scholars, judging by the rude patterns on the door posts, put them down to the Danes. Another set say that they were made by the original inhabitants of Ireland, previous even to the Celts,–who of course, like all other Aryan people primarily came from Asia.

I am sorrey that my epistle is rather late in arrival this week: but what with people bothering from Malvern, and letters to be written home, I have not had many free evenings. I feel confidant of your always understanding that, when my letters fail to arrive, there is a good, or at least a reasonable explanation. Now that I have threshed out the question of Shee, and apologized, I don’t know that there is much to write beyond hoping that ‘Loki’ is proceding expeditiously in music & illustration.

Last week I was up with these people to the Coliseum: and, though of course (which by the way I see no prospect of) I had sooner have gone to some musical thing, yet I enjoyed myself. The Russian Ballet–and especially the music to it–was magnificent, and G. P. Huntley in a new sketch provoked some laughter. The rest of the show trivial & boring as music halls usually are.⁵² At ‘Gastons’ however, I have no lack of entertainment, having been recently introduced to Chopin’s Mazurkas, & Beethoven’s ‘Sonate Pathétique’.⁵³

No: there is no talk yet of going home. And, to tell you the truth, I am not sorry: firstly, I am very happy at Bookham, and secondly, a week at home, if it is to be spent in pulling long faces in Church & getting confirmed, is no great pleasure–a statement, I need hardly say, for yourself alone.

Yrs.

Jack Lewis

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 239-49):

[Gastons]

Postmark: 3 November 1914

My dear Papy,

If suddenly there descends upon innocent Leeborough a monstrosity of brown paper containing school books from Malvern, don’t lose your head: or in other words, Porch⁵⁴ having asked me what to do with some books I had forgotten, was asked by me to send them home, which he may do at any time. I do not want you to send them on.

This fellow Smythe who lost his arm at the front, has been telling all sorts of interesting things to Mrs. K., who was up to town to see him last week. I think they ought to be collected and published under the title of ‘The right way to get shot’. One is relieved to hear that it is not painful at the time.

What do you think of this latest outrage perpetuated by the slander, ignorance, and prejudice of the British nation on those who alone can support it? I mean of course the shameful way in which Prince Louis of Battenberg has been forced to resign.⁵⁵ He is, I hear, the only man in the Admiralty who knows his job: he has lived all his life in England: his patriotism, loyalty, and efficiency are admitted by all who have a right to judge. And yet, because a number of ignorant and illiterate clods (who have no better employment than that of abusing their betters) so choose, he must resign. This is what comes of letting a nation be governed by ‘the people’. ‘Vox populi, vox Diaboli’,⁵⁶ we might say, reversing an old but foolish proverb.

I suppose things in Belfast are much in the same condition as usual. I hope a few people are clearing off to the front. Some of those people one meets on the Low Holywood Road would be improved by shooting. Any news from our representative in the Army? I suppose he will hardly be out of England yet? I am so pleased at not forgetting to post the letter you sent to him that I shall be furious if you don’t get an answer. Has it ever struck you that one of the most serious consequences of this war is what Kirk calls ‘the survival of the unfittest’? All those who have the courage to do so and are physically sound, are going off to be shot: those who survive are moral and physical weeds–a fact which does not promise favourably for the next generation.

We are beginning to make a feeble attempt at winter here, but the weather is still beautifully mild. I hope you are keeping fit and in good spirits–(Yes thank you Papy, my cold is a good deal better!)

your loving son,

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W/LP IV: 236-7):

[Gastons

4 November 1914]

Dear Arthur,

I suppose that I should, as is usual in my case begin my epistle with an apology for its tardiness: but that form of adress is becoming so habitual as to be monotonous, so that it may be taken for granted.

I was, if I may say so, not a little amused to hear you say in an offhand manner ‘The Celts used to retire to them in time of war’, when antiquarians have been disputing for ages: but of course you have grounds for your statement I admit. Your souteraines are, I imagine, but another variety of the same phenomena as my Shidhes: when I said ‘doorposts’ I did not imply the existence of doors, meaning only the stone pillars, commonly (I believe) found at the entrances to these excavations.

Great Bookham and the present arrangement continue to give every satisfaction which is possible. But there is one comfort which must inevitably be wanting anywhere except at home–namely, the ability to write whenever one wishes. For, though of course there is no formal obstacle, you will readily see that it is impossible to take out one’s manuscript and start to work in another’s house. And, when ideas come flowing upon me, so great is the desire of framing them into words, words into sentences, and sentences into metre, that the inability to do so, is no light affliction. You, when you are cut off for a few weeks from a piano, must experience much the same sensations. But it would be ridiculous for me to pretend that, in spite of this unavoidable trouble, I was not comfortable. Work and liesure, each perfect and complete of its kind, form an agreeable supplent to the other, strikingly different to the dreary labour and compulsory pasttimes of Malvern life. The glorious pageant of the waning year, lavishing her autumn glories on a lovely countryside, fills me, whenever I take a solitary walk among the neighbouring hills, with a great sense of comfort & peace.

So great is the selfishness of human nature, that I can look out from my snug nest with the same equanimity on the horrid desolation of the war, and the well known sorrows of my old school. I feel that this ought not to be so: but I can no more alter my disposition than I can change the height of my stature or the colour of my hair. It would be mere affectation to pretend that sympathy with those whose lot is not so happy as mine, seriously disturbs the tenour of my complacence. Whether this is the egotism of youth, some blemish in my personal character, or the common inheritance of humanity, I do not know. What is your opinion?

I am reading at present, for the second time, the Celtic plays of Yeats.⁵⁷ I must try & get them next time I am at home. Write soon, and tell me all that you are doing, reading & thinking.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 240-1):

[Gastons

8? November 1914]

My dear Papy,

If bounty on the part of his weary audience could stop the sermon of the philosopher, I should be compelled to close our controversy of the paradise and inferno: but even the four, crisp, dainty postal orders (for which many thanks) cannot deter me from exposing the logical weakness of your position. The arguments, as you will recollect, upon which I based my theory, were briefly as follows: that when evils cannot be averted by him who suffers them, i.e. you and I, who cannot go into the army–he would do well to shut his eyes and pretend that they do not exist. For the evil, being in itself a fixed quantity, can neither be multiplied or diminished when it actually descends: but the agony of anticipation may be attenuated to nothing. Bearing these facts in mind, your imaginary dialogue, lively and picturesque tho’ it may be, is irrelevant: since your two friends are presumably in a position to volunteer, and their case therefore offers no parallel to our own. In short, you have shifted the ground of argument by substituting the description of a satanist for the demonstrations of a philosopher.

I carried out to the letter your directions about Warnie: or in other words, as he arranged nowhere I met him nowhere. A pity. But who are we to cavil at the arrangements of this great man. Seriously however, I know what your feelings must be when, to the annoyance arising from his shipshod methods at such a moment, is added the anxiety of his present position at the front.⁵⁸ Let me offer however such consolations as the case permits of. If, by the Grace of God, he returns unscathed from this hideous masque of death, it will be a sadder and wiser Warnie than he who went away: the indiscretions of a raw Malvern school boy. If, as we both hope and pray, this turns out to be the case, we may indeed feel, that in one home at least, this outburst of the primitive savagery of man will not have been without a compensation.

In the meantime, your worry about Palmes⁵⁹ need not be of much importance. I had the honour of meeting this gentleman on one of W’s visits to Malvern: he is a harmless, amiable idiot who will make no fuss, and the sum that he lent is, I believe, trifling. Surely too, it is rather hard to call a man a cad, just because he demands his own money back: even if he does so (I am convinced through sheer empty headedness) on a P.C.

Hoping that this will find you in good health and tolerable spirits, I remain,

your loving son,

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W/LP IV: 239):

[Gastons

10 November 1914]

Dear Arthur,

It is the immemorial privilege of letter-writers to commit to paper things they would not say: to write in a more grandiose manner than that in which they speak: and to enlarge upon feelings which would be passed by unnoticed in conversation. For this reason I do not attach much importance to your yearnings for an early grave: not, indeed, because I think, as you suggest, that the wish for death is wrong or even foolish, but because I know that a cold in the head is quite an insufficient cause to provoke such feelings. I am glad Monday found you in a more reasonable frame of mind.

By the way, I hear nothing about music or illustrations now! Eh? I hope that this can be accounted for by the fact that both are finished. I suppose the former has been performed in the Ulster Hall, by this time, and the latter exhibited–where? Here the sentence comes to a stop: for I have suddenly realized that there is no picture gallery in Belfast. It never occurred to me before what a disgrace that was. I notice, too, that you answer my questions about ‘doing’ and ‘reading’ but keep a modest silence about ‘thinking’. It is often difficult to tell, is not it? And seldom advisable: which makes me think about the hard question of truth. Is it always advisable to tell the truth? Certainly not, say I: sometimes actually criminal. And yet, useful as it is for everyday life, that doctrine will land one in sad sophistries if carried to its conclusion. What is your view?

The other day I was in Guildford (it is a glorious old English town with those houses that [get] bigger towards the top; a Norman castle; a street built up a preposterous hill; and beautiful environments) where I picked up a volume of Wm. Morris’s lyric poems in that same edition in which you have ‘The Wood at the Worlds end’.⁶⁰ So delighted was I with my purchase, that I have written up to the publisher for the same author’s ‘Sigurd the Volsung’:⁶¹ which, as I need hardly tell you, is a narrative poem, dealing with Siegfried (=Sigurd) & Brünhilde, as described in the legends of Iceland, earlier than those of Germany. What is your opinion of Ainsworth? I see you are reading his ‘Old St. Pauls’.⁶² I must confess I find him dreary–a faint echo of Scott, with all the latter’s faults of lengthiness and verbosity and not of his merits of lively narrative & carefully-welded plots.

When you talk about the difficulty of getting the necessary materials for one’s pursuits, I am thankful that, in my case, when the opportunity is at hand, the means–paper & pen–is easily found. Whereas you, unfortunately, need a piano or a box of paints and a block of drawing paper.

I hope there will be some relics of us left when we have settled that question of souteraines.

Yrs sincerely,

Jack Lewis

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 244-5):

[Gastons

13? November 1914]

My dear Papy,

I was glad to receive your letter this evening (Friday) as I was beginning to get anxious: and thought that I would write my reply at once while your words were still in my head. I must admit that my defence of Palmes was founded on a misconception of his plans–which is excusable, in as much as, if you saw the gentleman in the flesh, you would never imagine that he had the intelligence for such an idea.

After this magnanimous confession of my defeat, I cannot refrain from observing that there is no reply to my last step in the ‘Paradise-Inferno’ controversy. But as no further disputation is possible after my crushing and exhaustive demonstration, that is not much to be wondered at.

Although perhaps the occasion demands a graver view, I cannot restrain a smile when I think of the colonel staying at a first class hotel in ‘Haver’ and strutting about in his uniform like a musical comedy hero.

It seems a great pity this confirmation should occur when it does, thus cutting out at least a week of valuable time. Although fully sensible that it is of course of more importance than the work, yet if it could possibly be managed at some more convenient date in the near future, I should think it an advantage. I believe there is one held at Easter, which I might attend with less derangement of our plans. I would ask you to consider this point before mentioning the matter to Kirk. I am not quite clear from your letter as to what you propose to do. As I read it, three interpretations are admissable.

1 That you bring me home for the necessary time and send me back for the odd weeks.

2 That you add from Dec. 6th–Xmas on to the ordinary holidays.

3 That you have ordinary length holidays, only beginning on the 6th and ending earlier.

Of these alternatives, (a) is practicable enough, but necessitates a tiresome and expensive amount of extra travelling: (b) is agreeable, but wasteful of time and quite unthinkable. (c) is not only extremely alien from all our usual plans, but would also put Kirk to a great deal of trouble and annoyance. So that none of the three is really satisfactory. However, you will discuss the point in your next letter. If this Kodotta about cross channel boats goes on much longer, the matter will not rest in our hands.

Hoping for a continuance of health on your part, as well as an improvement in spirits, I am

your loving son,

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W/LP IV: 282):

[Gastons

17 November 1914]

My dear Arthur,

Do you ever wake up in the morning and suddenly wonder why you have not bought such-and-such a book long ago, and then decided that life without it will be quite unbearable? I do frequently: the last attack was this morning à propos of Malory’s ‘Morte D’Arthur’, and I have just this moment written to Dent’s for it. I am drawing a bow at a venture and getting the Everyman two-shilling ‘Library’ edition.⁶³ What is it like, do you know? As for the book itself, I really can’t think why I have not got it before. It is really the English national epic, for Paradise Lost⁶⁴ is a purely literary poem, while it is the essence of an epic to be genuine folk-lore. Also, Malory was the Master from whom William Morriss copied the style of his prose Tales.

Which reminds me of your criticism of the ‘Well’. I quite see your point, and, of course, agree that the interests of the tale reach their climax in the great scene at the World’s End: my reply is that the interest of the journey home is of quite a different nature. It is pleasant to pick up all the familiar places and characters and see the same circumstances applied to the heroe’s new role of ‘Friend of the Well’. The Battle-piece at the end is very fine, and the ending, tho’, as was inevitable, conventional, leaves one in a pleasant, satisfied state of mind. The only part that I found really tedious was Roger’s historical survey of the Burg & the Scaur. In fact, Roger was only a lay-figure brought in to conduct the Ladye’s machinations with Ralph, and why he was not allowed to drop into oblivion when they were over, I cannot imagine.

How I run on! And yet, however many pages one may fill in a letter, it is only a tithe of what ten minutes conversation would cover: it is curious, too, how the thoughts that bubble up so freely when one meets a friend, seem to congeal on paper, when writing to him.

I wonder what you, who complain of loneliness when surrounded by a numerous family and wide circle of friends, would do if you could change places with me. Except my grinder and his wife, I think I have not spoken to a soul this week: not of course that I mind, much less complain; on the contrary, I find that the people whose society I prefer to my own are very few and far between. The only one of that class in Bookham, is still in the house, though they tell me she is up and about.⁶⁵ Of course, as they say at home, this solitude is a kind of egotism: and yet I don’t know that they are right. The usual idea is that if you don’t want to talk to people, you do so because you think they’re intellectually your inferiors. But its not a question of inferiority: if a man talks to me for an hour about golf, war & politics, I know that his mind is built on different lines from mine: but whether better or worse is not to the point.

My only regret at present is that I cannot see Co. Down in the snow: I am sure some of our favourite haunts look very fine. We have been deeply covered with it all week, and the pine wood near hear, with the white masses on ground and trees, forms a beautiful sight. One almost expects a ‘march of dwarfs’ to come dashing past! How I long to break away into a world where such things were true: this real, hard, dirty, Monday morning modern world stifles one. Progress in health and spirits and music! Write soon and give all your thoughts, actions, readings and any local gossip, for the benefit of

yours sincerely

Jack Lewis

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 246):

[Gastons]

Postmark: 20 November 1914

My dear Papy,

I received your answer this evening and decided to be guided by your views, or in other words my objections to the ‘Monstre’ holiday are not insuperable. Break the news gently to Kirk, as I am not sure he will relish the interruption.

I hope you will enjoy prosecuting dear Mr. Russell:⁶⁶ he will probably give you ‘something to be going on with’ in the way of back chat. Tell me any news of Warnie as soon as you hear it. I will stop now, as this is only a ‘letter extraordinary’.

your loving

son Jack

Lewis returned to Belfast on 28 November and was confirmed in St Mark’s on 6 December. Writing of this in SBJ X, he said: ‘My relations to my father help to explain (I am not suggesting they excuse) one of the worst acts of my life. I allowed myself to be prepared for confirmation, and confirmed, and to make my first Communion, in total disbelief, acting a part, eating and drinking my own condemnation.’

TO HIS BROTHER (LP IV: 276-7):

[Little Lea,

Strandtown.

22 December 1914]

⁶⁷–but perhaps I’d better write in English. This has become such a habit you know, but I beg your pardon.

It is a pity that you happen to be at the front just now, as–at last–an Opera Company came to Belfast while you were away. It was the ‘Moody Manners’, but that you have heard P. talking about. They were quite good, though somewhat early Victorian in the way of scenery and gestures. We went to ‘Faust’⁶⁸ and ‘Trovatore’.⁶⁹ The former was perfectly glorious, well sung and everything. It is a very good opera and of course knowing a good deal of the music and having read Goethe, I enjoyed it very well. Of course I have discovered that it is no use expecting to hear the overture or preludes to the acts at Belfast, as everyone talks all the time as if nothing were going on. Il Trovatore, as we have always agreed, is a very mediocre thing anyway, and, with the exception of the soprano and baritone, was villainously sung. I don’t want to hear it again.

On the following Friday we got badly let down: the Glenmachonians Greeves’s and I had made up a party to go to ‘Samson and Delilah’,⁷⁰ which we were all looking forward to immensely. Imagine our feelings when the cod at the door told us it has been changed to ‘Fra Diavolo’–a very inferior comic opera of Auber’s!⁷¹ I seem to be fated never to get fair treatment from that theatre management. Fra Diavolo impresses on one how very badly the comic opera needed reform when Gilbert and Sullivan came to the rescue:⁷² it is the old style–bandits, a foolish English earl, innkeepers ‘and sich’. It was without exception the greatest drivel I ever listened to. There has been nothing worth noticing at the Hippodrome lately. Those two people–I’ve forgotten their names–who do the sketch about the broken mirror, were at the Opera House last week. The Opera House is now in the grip of that annual monstrosity the Grand Xmas Panto. I suppose I ought to be reconciled to it as fate by now. One good thing is that Tom Foy is coming, but of course the whole thing will be awfully patriotic.

I like your asking why I didn’t go to meet you in town. You omitted the trifling precaution of telling me your address–or did you intend that I should go up to a policeman in Piccadilly and ask, ‘Have you seen my brother anywhere?’

The new records are a most interesting and varied selection, comprising ‘The calf of gold’ from Faust, with a vocal ‘Star of Eve’⁷³ on the other side: the Drinking and Duel scenes from Faust: Saint Saen’s ‘Danse Macabre’:⁷⁴ Grieg’s ‘March of the Dwarfs’:⁷⁵ and ‘Salve Minerva’ from Faust. There are also several new books, but most of them are not in your line: the only two you might care for are the works of Shelley and Keats.

We were up at Glenmachan yesterday (Monday) evening to a supper party of Kelsie’s where you went representing a novel.⁷⁶ All the usual push were there of course, and I quite enjoyed it. A number of people besides, whom I had never seen before, also turned up. There was one rather pretty thing whom Lily⁷⁷ is arranging as ‘suitable’ for Willie Greeves⁷⁸–in opposition I suppose to the Taylor affair. Of course it is all very nice, but don’t you thank the gods you haven’t got a sister?

One other piece of local gossip is so funny that you really must hear it. Do you know a vulgar, hideous old harridan on the wrong side of 40, a Miss Henderson, who lives at Norwood Towers? She’s just the sort of creature who would live there. Well the latest wheeze is that you meet her every time you go to Glenmachan, running after Bob.⁷⁹ And the beauty of the thing is that she makes Bob bustle about and talk to her and flirt with her. I know you can’t imagine Bob ‘courtin’. I promise you it is a thing of beauty. While admiring the creature’s energy in getting a move on anyone like him, I don’t want her to get into the connection even as remotely as the sister in law of my second cousins.

You’re becoming quite a hero in your absence, and I can always command a large and attentive audience by spinning yarns about ‘The other day my brother, who is at the front etc.’ Hope is here now, and the Captain was home for a few days–I suppose you saw that he is now a Major? Why couldn’t you manage to get a few days off? You would at any rate have a change of clothes and diet if you did. Last week we went to the Messiah with Carrie Tubb⁸⁰ as soprano–she can sing, but she’s as ugly as the day is long. The contralto, altho she hadn’t much of a voice, was an improvement in that way–really quite a magnificent creature. Rather like the woman whom we met in France going about with the Katinarsky’s. I wondered if it was the same, but I suppose not, as the other would be younger. Of course Handel is not your ideal or mine as a composer: but it is always fair to remember that he wrote in the days of spinets and harpsichords, before anyone had discovered that there could be any point in music beyond a sort of abstract prettiness. Of course the inappropriateness of his tunes is appalling–as for instance where he makes the chorus repeat some twenty times that they have all gone astray like sheep in the same tone of cheerful placidity that they’d use for saying it was a fine evening.

Yes: the Kirk arrangement is absolutely it. The war is mainly interesting to him as illustrating some remark he made to ‘Mr. Dods’ fifty years ago. The only trouble about Bookham is our dear Mrs. Crutwell. I don’t know if it was the same in your time, but she has lately developed a mania for ‘seeing young people enjoying themselves’–and you know what that means. Write some time.

Yours, Jack

P.S. Did you ever get the letter I wrote from Larne?

1 William Eyre Hamilton Quennel (1898-?) entered School House the same term as Jack, and left Malvern in 1916. From there he went to Sandhurst, and in 1917 was gazetted into the 7th Dragoon Guards. He was promoted to lieutenant the same year. After the war he trained to be a doctor at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London. During World War II he served as medical officer in the Essex Yeomanry

2 ‘The good matron’ was Miss Backhurst, of whom Warnie wrote: ‘She was better known and abominated by many generations of School House boys under her usual appellation of “The Old Bitch”. She was a weak, spiteful, fussy, prying old woman, absurdly sensitive on the point of dignity, and like so many stupid women, always seeing ridicule where none was intended’ (LP IV: 131).

3 Sir Arnold Lunn, The Harrovians (1913).

4 James Craig, first Viscount Craigavon (1871-1940), statesman. He was born in Belfast and was the MP for East Down 1906-18; MP for Mid-Down 1918-21; parliamentary secretary to the Ministry of Pensions 1919-20 and to the Admiralty 1920-1. He was chief secretary to Sir Edward Carson in opposing home rule, and was active in organizing means of resistance in Ulster. He was the first prime minister of Northern Ireland 1921-40. Captain Craig, as he was in 1914, was a very popular figure in the North of Ireland, and his house was about a hundred yards from Little Lea.

5 H.M.A. Guerber, Myths of the Norsemen from the Eddas and Sagas (1908).

6 Gerard Parker (1896-?) was in School House 1910-14, and was school prefect. After leaving Malvern he went to Sandhurst, passing from there in 1915 into the Devon Regiment. He was promoted to lieutenant in 1917 and during the war he was mentioned in despatches. He made captain in 1926, and retired in 1931.

7 Canon James had been succeeded as headmaster by Frank Sansome Preston (1875-1970) who had been educated at Marlborough College and Pembroke College, Cambridge. He was an assistant master at Marlborough 1899-1914, and headmaster of Malvern 1914-37.

8 In SBJ VII Lewis said that while ‘Smewgy’ was the major blessing of Malvern, the other ‘undisguised blessing of the Coll was “the Gurney”, the school library; not because it was a library, but because it was a sanctuary As the negro used to become free on touching English soil, so the meanest boy was “unfaggable” once he was inside the Gurney.’

9 Robert Bridges (1844-1930), Poet Laureate from 1913. His poetry appeared in a single volume in 1912, and this was probably what Lewis was reading.

10 Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847).

11 Annie Strahan was the cook-housekeeper at Little Lea, 1911-17.

12 The tragedy, Norse in subject and Greek in form, which Lewis was writing.

13 The Greeves’s home in Circular Road was directly across from Little Lea.

14 Joel 1:4.

15 Arthur Christopher Benson, The Upton Letters (1905).

16 The Times (2 June 1914), p. 9.

17 Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934), composer, who rose to international fame about 1900 through his choral and orchestral music. He was living in Worcester at this time.

18 John Henry Newman, Verses on Various Occasions (1868).

19 Newman’s Dream of Gerontius depicts the journey of the soul to God at the hour of death. In 1900 it was set to music by Elgar, who regarded the work as his masterpiece. Lewis came to like the Dream very much in later life and in a discussion of Purgatory in chapter 20 of Letters to Malcolm (1964) he said ‘the right view returns magnificently in Newman’s Dream.

20 Cedric Edwin Hamley (1899-1997) was an exact contemporary of Jack Lewis in School House, having arrived in the third term of 1913. He left in 1915 and served in the war with the London Rifle Brigade. He was afterwards a 2nd lieutenant in the RAF, and a captain in the 3rd London Fusiliers from 1922-28. He worked in the family business, C. Hamley Ltd. in London.

21 It is reproduced in LP IV: 198-200.

22 William Shakespeare, As You Like It (1623).

23 Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield (1766).

24 George Louis Kirkpatrick (1882-1943) was the only child of Mr and Mrs Kirkpatrick. He was born 23 May 1882 when his father was still headmaster of Lurgan College, and educated in England at Charterhouse 1896-99. From there he went to work for the electrical engineers, Browett, Lindley & Co., English Makers of Patricroft, Manchester. When Mr Kirkpatrick retired from Lurgan he and Mrs Kirkpatrick moved to Manchester to be near him. Now Louis was in a camp near Great Bookham. He was general manager of Bruce Peebles & Co. (Engineers) in Edinburgh from 1932 until his death in 1943.

25 Arthur had given him H.G. Wells’ The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories [1911].

26 In Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility (1811).

27 Homer, the Greek poet generally believed to have lived in about the eighth century BC, is famous for his two epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Mr Kirkpatrick wasted no time preparing Lewis to undertake these Greek masterpieces. ‘We opened our books at Iliad, Book I,’ Lewis wrote in SBJ IX. ‘Without a word of introduction Knock read aloud the first twenty lines or so in the “new” pronunciation, which I had never heard before…He then translated, with a few, a very few explanations, about a hundred lines. I had never seen a classical author taken in such large gulps before. When he had finished he handed me over Crusius’ Lexicon and, having told me to go through again as much as I could of what he had done, left the room. It seems an odd method of teaching, but it worked. At first I could travel only a very short way along the trail he had blazed, but every day I could travel further…I was beginning to think in Greek. That is the great Rubicon to cross in learning any language.’ Lewis was using Gottlieb Christian Crusius, A Complete Greek and English Lexicon for the Poems of Homer and the Homeridae: Illustrating the Domestic, Religious, Political, and Military Condition of the Heroic Age, and Explaining the Most Difficult Passages. Translated with corrections and additions by Henry Smith. New Edition revised and edited by Thomas Kerchever Arnold (1862).

28 Eric Robertson Dodds (1893-1979), classical scholar, was from Banbridge, County Down. He was educated at Campbell College, and University College, Oxford. At this time he was reading Literae Humaniores at University College. He took his BA in 1917. Dodds was Lecturer in Classics at University College, Reading 1919-24, Professor of Greek at the University of Birmingham 1924-36 and Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford, 1936-60. See his autobiography, Missing Persons (1977).

29 Martin Gilbert, First World War (1994), p. 25.

30 St Nicolas Church, the earliest parts of which were built in the 11th century, is mentioned in the Domesday Book. The Reverend George Shepheard Bird was rector 1905-26. Jane Austen went to St Nicolas often when her godfather was vicar.

31 ‘The Nietzschean Way’, The Times Literary Supplement (1 October 1914), p. 442.

32 i.e. Mr Kirkpatrick.

33 H.T. Buckle, History of Civilization in England (1857; 1861).

34 The Ewart family who lived in nearby Glenmachan House. See The Ewart Family in the Biographical Appendix.

35 For some weeks the Germans had been intent on reaching the Belgian and French coastline. In an attempt to prolong the defence of their port city, Antwerp, the Belgian government appealed to Britain for troops. Thousands of British troops rushed to the aid of Antwerp, but by 10 October it was impossible to hold it against the Germans. By this time tens of thousands of Belgian refugees had arrived in England.

36 A nickname given Warnie by his father and brother.

37 Virgil (70-19 BC), the greatest Roman poet, wrote four ‘Georgics’, which are didactic poems in hexameters on Italy and traditional ways of rural life.

38 T.W. Rolleston, Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race (1912).

39 Whether Arthur Greeves ever attempted any part of his share in the musical drama is not known, but Lewis’s lyric text of ‘Loki Bound’ filled 32 pages of a notebook. The only part of this which has survived consists of 819 lines reproduced in LP IV: 218-20.

40 Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky’s Chanson Triste was first performed in 1878.

41 The nickname of Ludwig van Beethoven’s piano sonata No. 14 in C sharp, Opus 27, No. 2 (1802).

42 Frédéric Chopin’s Marche Funêbre was first performed in 1827.

43 Edvard Grieg’s piano solo, the Peer Gynt Suite No. 2 (1893).

44 The female Fates of Norse mythology.

45 The ‘Honeymooners’ were probably Arthur’s brother, Thomas Greeves, and Winifred Lynas, who were married on 22 September 1914.

46 Matthew 6:28: ‘Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin.’

47 This was Arthur’s mother, Mrs Mary Margretta (Gribbon) Greeves. See Arthur Greeves in the Biographical Appendix.

48 The rumour that Germany would invade England persisted for a long time and worried Albert greatly. It may have started with an article in The Times (15 October 1914) entitled ‘Will Invasion be Tried?’ in which the war correspondent said: ‘Now that the war is reaching the climax of its violence we must anticipate that all the living forces of Germany will be thrown into the conflict, and that the German navy will no longer remain inert. We must expect to be attacked at home, and must not rest under any comforting illusions that we shall not be assailed. As an attack upon us can have no serious object, unless the intention is to land an expedition in England for the purposes of compelling us to sign a disastrous peace, it is well that we should look the situation calmly in the face, and reckon up not only Germany’s power to do us harm, but also our power of resistance and means for improving it’ (p. 4).

49 ‘Seize the day’. Horace, Odes, Book I, Ode 11,l.8, in which the poet urges Leuconoe to take thought for the present and not to worry inordinately about the future.

50 In a letter of 12 October, in which Warnie asked his father for a loan, he explained that he was owed money by Sandhurst and that ‘I have communicated with my bankers’ (LP IV: 229).

51 Their cousin, Hope Ewart (1882-1934), married Captain George Harding (1877-1957) in 1911 and they went to live in Dublin. Harding joined the army in 1900 and had been a member of the Army Service Corps since 1901. He was promoted to major in October 1914. He gained the DSO during the war and retired in 1928 with the rank of colonel.

52 The programme at the London Coliseum between 19 and 24 October included the Imperial Russian Ballet’s performance of Fleurs d’Orange and G.P. Huntley acting in Eric Blore’s A Burlington Arcadian.

53 Ludwig van Beethoven, Sonata No. 8, ‘Pathétique’ (1799).

54 Robert Bagehot Porch (1875-1962) was a pupil at Malvern College 1888-94. From there he went to Trinity College, Oxford, receiving his BA in 1898. He joined the staff of Malvern College in 1904 and taught there most of his life.

55 Prince Louis of Battenburg (1854-1921) was born in Austria. He moved to England when he was a boy and had risen through the ranks of the Royal Navy to become First Sea Lord. Despite all that Winston Churchill could do, as first lord of the Admiralty, Prince Louis was forced to resign. He relinquished his German titles and the family name was changed to Mountbatten.

56 ‘The voice of the people is the voice of the Devil’.

57 W.B. Yeats had published many Celtic plays. Lewis may have been thinking of his Plays for an Irish Theatre (1911).

58 Warnie crossed to France with the Army Service Corps on 4 November. They were part of the British Expeditionary Force stationed at Le Havre.

59 Guy Nicholas Palmes (1894-1915) entered Malvern in 1908, and left in 1911 for the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. He joined the Yorkshire Light Infantry at the beginning of the war and was promoted to lieutenant in 1915. He was killed in action near Ypres on 9 May 1915.

60 He meant William Morris’s The Well at the World’s End (1896).

61 William Morris, Sigurd the Volsung (1876).

62 William Harrison Ainsworth, Old St Paul’s (1841).

63 Le Morte D’Arthur is the title generally given to the cycle of Arthurian legends by Sir Thomas Malory, finished in 1470 and printed by Caxton in 1485. The version Lewis began with was Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory, with an introduction by Professor Rhys, 2 vols., Everyman’s Edition [1906].

64 John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667).

65 This was probably Mrs Kirkpatrick’s ‘theatrical’ friend, Miss MacMullen, whom Lewis mentioned to his father on 13 October.

66 Mr Russell was a harmless, but terrifying, lunatic who was for many years a well-known figure in and around St Mark’s.

67 ‘O dearest brother, I am sorry not to have written.’

68 An opera by Charles Gounod, based on the Faust of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and first produced in 1859.

69 Il Trovatore, an opera by Giuseppe Verdi, was first performed in 1853.

70 Samson et Dalila, an opera by Camille Saint-Saëns, was first performed in 1877.

71 Daniel Auber’s opera Fra Diavolo was first performed in 1830.

72 W.S. Gilbert (1836-1911), playwright and librettist, and Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900), composer, together wrote many very popular operettas. They include The Pirates of Penzance performed in 1879, The Mikado performed in 1885, and The Yeoman of the Guard performed in 1888.

73 ‘Bright Star of Eve’ is from Charles Gounod’s New Part Songs (1872 or 1873).

74 Camille Saint-Saëns’s orchestral work Danse Macabre was first performed in 1872.

75 ‘March of the Dwarfs’ is a piano piece in Edvard Grieg’s Lyriske Stykker (1891).

76 Their mother’s sister, Mrs Lilian ‘Lily’ Suffern (1860-1934), wrote to Warnie on 3 February 1915 about the book party. ‘On 21st Dec.,’ she said, ‘Kelsie gave a book party which was very amusing… Some of the books were very good–too good for me, for I couldn’t guess them. Your father’s was Edged Tools, a fan and a knife. Clive’s was The Three Musketeers– a bit of paper with “Soldier’s Three” on it, it made us all mad because it was so plain, and we did not (many) guess it. Miss Murray’s was a cutting from that day’s Newsletter of the birthdays–The Newcomes. Another cutting from the Newsletter won the prize–Advt. of rise in the price of coals–The Sorrows of Satan. No one hardly guessed Hugh McCreddy’s–yet it was very good–a picture of a man with his mouth wide open in a laugh–L’’Homme Qui Rit. I had a picture of the Kaiser, nicely framed in ribbon–The Egoist (Meredith). Everyone guessed it The Lunatic at Large. Three old ladys sitting talking (picture of), tied with green ribbon was Gossips Green. Willie Jaffe’s was bad–a black African with a white line down it–Across the Dark Continent’ (LP IV: 289-90).

(Henry Seton Merriman wrote With Edged Tools (1894); Alexandre Dumas wrote The Three Musketeers (1844-5); William Makepeace Thackeray wrote The Newcomes (1853-4); Marie Corelli wrote The Sorrows of Satan (1895); Victor Hugo wrote L’’Homme Qui Rit (1869); George Meredith wrote The Egoist (1879); Joseph Storer Clouston wrote The Lunatic at Large (1899); Alice Dudeney wrote Gossips Green (1906); and Sir Henry Morton Stanley wrote Through the Dark Continent (1878).)

Kelso Ewart (1886-1966) was the fourth child of Lady Ewart, the cousin of Flora Lewis, and her husband Sir William. See The Ewart Family in the Biographical Appendix.

77 Mary Elizabeth ‘Lily’ Greeves (1888-1976) was Arthur Greeves’s sister. She married Lewis’s cousin Charles Gordon Ewart (1885-1936) on 15 December 1915. See The Ewart Family in the Biographical Appendix.

78 This was Arthur’s brother, William Edward Greeves (1890-1960).

79 Robert Heard Ewart (1879-1939). See The Ewart Family in the Biographical Appendix.

80 Carrie Tubb (1876-1976) was an English soprano much in demand as an oratorio singer. She was a favourite singer of operatic excepts, notably the final scene of Richard Wagner’s Götterdämmerung.