8 St Aldates Oxford
My dear James
I was delighted to hear from you. Never apologise for long letters: I love them, especially from you. It is very sad that so few people write long letters now: the telephone and the motor-car have killed them by removing half the need for them: one sees one another, or talks to one another, so much more. And yet it is such a pleasure to receive genuine letters. I even like writing them, though of course one is always so short of time. I think it is a good thing to write them. If one never writes real letters one can never acquire the art of expressing one’s self; and at times it is such a relief to do so.
I am sorry you feel so inhibited with some people (especially since I am evidently one of them!). But don’t worry. Probably half the time when you feel you can’t make contact with the people you would like to know, they are doing exactly the same in respect of you. I remember when I was your age I felt exactly the same. I admired people (generally for wrong reasons) and felt that they despised me. How could they fail to do so when they were so successful, so good at games, so popular, or whatever it might be, while I was so unsuccessful, so unathletic, so awkward? It is true I was quite clever at books, but I only felt that people despised me the more for that, and I tried to conceal it and show that I, too, however unskilfully, did unintellectual things. But then I discovered that my whole view of the world was wrong, and really people don’t go round looking for the same qualities which they have themselves and despising other people. More often they despise themselves. What everyone in the world really wants, whether they are fully aware of it or not, is to be loved, and a character capable of inspiring or giving affection is never despised. This is one of the (many) reasons why I am very fond of you: I think you have a genuinely affectionate nature. Don’t you notice how people like you? It is quite obvious, for instance, that Mr Taylor is very fond of you. So, I am sure, are half the people of whom you are afraid and who you think despise you. So cheer up!
So you see what a shock it was to me when I was told that you were frightened of me, that I upset you, was the cause of your depression etc. I have felt unhappy about it ever since. But I hope you will not feel that in future. I am determined, within my limited means, to do everything I can for you. Of course I shall continue sometimes to show impatience, to be short-tempered etc., but you will understand, I hope, that this is merely my mood, and be tolerant of me.
I don’t really think you will retreat into a hole at Oxford. I think you will find it a new world, liberating rather than restricting. I hope so anyway. Most people do. But don’t bother yourself about it: at least not yet.
I look forward to going abroad with you. I hope our tastes will not be too different. We can talk about it at long leave. Will you renew your own passport? Please do: I have so much to do at present! It is quite simple. But please let me know when you do it and through what agency. This is important because, as you know, there have been difficulties about your passport in the past. All will be well because I have now got a legal certificate to protect it, but I must know when and where to use it.1
I expect your essay was excellent really. Don’t always assume you do things badly: you don’t. As for Shakespeare, don’t read too many commentaries. In reading any great work one must read as much as is necessary to appreciate it: one must know the language, understand the allusions, or at least the important allusions, appreciate the nuances. But once one can do that, it is the great work, not the commentary that matters. I think Logan Pearsall Smith’s On Reading Shakespeare is a wonderful book in that way: it carries one along, makes one look at Shakespeare from different angles, appreciate both the language and the dramatic quality, and see new aspects of both, and see them freshly, not overlaid with too much learning.2
I knew Logan Pearsall Smith very well. In fact he was the man who had more personal influence on me than anyone else. He even left me all his money—but then, at the last minute, there came a ghastly young man,3 much less worthy than I, and flattered him and pretended to be interested in literature, and Logan, with a stroke of his pen, lying on his death-bed, half-mad (he suffered from a kind of mild temporary insanity which comes and goes, bringing alternation of exhilaration and depression, called ‘manic depression’—he wrote his books, as one can sometimes see, when exhilarated), struck me out and left everything to the ghastly young man. Then he died. Of course it didn’t end there. There were terrible scenes. Someone else, who thought that if the last will could be declared invalid, he would scoop the inheritance, tried to get Logan certified insane. Logan’s sister, Alys Russell (Bertrand Russell’s wife), joined in. There was drama upon drama. I kept right out of it because I thought it was all so sordid. Finally there was an agreement between the ghastly young man and the ‘someone else’, and they split the swag. Neither of them realised that really the money hadn’t been left to the ‘someone else’ before the ghastly young man turned up, but to me. Then the ‘someone else’ wrote a book about Logan saying what a monster he was!1 I reviewed the book on the wireless and said he wasn’t a monster at all, and was furiously attacked! The whole episode was a horrible illustration of human behaviour and has made me feel very strongly about wills and will-shakers (Logan’s word): I often think of it when it is a question of humouring grand-mère2 or when I see anyone sacrificing their lives, or part of them, to the illusory hopes of legacies!
What a marvellous play Antony and Cleopatra is! Shakespeare’s poetry, as it got less pure and limpid (in the early poems it is so unbelievably pure and limpid), seems to me to get deeper and deeper: depth opens below depth: it is like Aeschylus, multi-dimensional; and in Antony and Cleopatra I feel that there is an altogether new dimension
Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch
Of the rang’d empire fall…
Eternity was in our lips and eyes,
Bliss in our brows’ bent…
Oh, my oblivion is a very Antony…
Give me to drink Mandragora
That I might sleep out this great gap of time…
But let determin’d things to destiny
Hold unbewail’d their way…
darkling stand
The varying shore of the world…
Don’t you feel this new dimension, this sense, suddenly evoked, of a vaster, wider, deeper, not more complicated but more unfathomable, more mysterious world than hitherto one had assumed?
What a mystery Shakespeare is! I often wish I could penetrate it. But always I remember Logan’s warning, which you have read, about the lunacy in which all such fond ambitions end.
Now I must stop. Let my last words (for the time being) be these: don’t be frightened. If in doubt, if in depression, if in anxiety, say so without fear. We have invented language, refined it so that it can express even the subtlest thought, even the obscurest sensations; why then should we not use it, and dissolve difficulties by articulating them? I have the greatest confidence in you; there is nothing I would not say to you with trust, or hear from you with sympathy.
All my love from
Hugh