1918

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 256–7):

[France]

4 January 1918

My dear Papy,

Your letter, with the enclosure for which I thank you very much, arrived the day before yesterday. Before going any further, I should say in answer to your question that I find my pay quite sufficient for all my needs and comforts. I am glad that I shall not have to bother you in that way.

I have thought a good deal about the question that is uppermost in both our minds, and talked it over with some of my friends. The arguments in favour of staying where I am seem overwhelming, and I have finally made up my mind to do so. I am very sorry that you should have taken trouble unnecessarily, and I hope that my decision will not be a disappointment to you. From what you say in your last letter, I think you agree with me that the gunners are not really preferable for safety or society. I have been up in the trenches for a few days (which I will speak about later on) attached to a company for instruction, and the number of shells that went singing over our heads to fall on the batteries far away behind, did not–as you may imagine–weaken my affection for the infantry!

I am now back again on a course of bombing, where I live with the bombing officer, a very nice fellow, of literary tastes, in a quite comfortable billet. The work, involving a good deal of chemical and mechanical questions, is not of the sort my brain takes to readily, but as long as one is safe and has an unbroken nights sleep, there is nothing to grouse about I suppose.

You will be anxious to hear my first impressions of trench life. This is a very quiet part of the line and the dug outs are very much more comfortable than one imagines at home. They are very deep, you go down to them by a shaft of about 20 steps: they have wire bunks where a man can sleep quite snugly, and brasiers for warmth and cooking. Indeed, the chief discomfort is that they tend to get too hot, while of course the bad air makes one rather headachy. I had quite a pleasant time, and was only once in a situation of unusual danger, owing to a shell falling near the latrines while I was using them.

I think I told you that I had read ‘Adam Bede’ and am now at ‘The Mill on the Floss’,¹ which I like even better. Do you know of any life of George Elliot published in a cheap edition? If you can find one, I should like to read it.

Thank you muchly for the smokeables. The pipes have been soaked in whiskey, according to the dictum of experts, and are going very well. I also thank you from my heart for your last letter that defies definition. I am very proud of my father.

With such wishes for the New Year as still seem possible,

I am,

your loving son,

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

No 10 British Red Cross Hospital²

Le Tréport

France.

2/2/18

My dear Galahad,

Here I am safely ensconced in a bed in hospital, miles away from the line, thank the gods, and therefore at last in a position to write you a more or less respectable letter. The news of my illness will have been given you by Mrs Moore, so there is no need to waste words on that.

I was sorry to hear that you were in trouble over the death of your cousin:³ I did not think that you had been so attached to him. Your letters are always very sad now. I hope you are not letting yourself ‘fall into a melancholy’ as Johnson would have said in some severe letter to his Boswell. Now is the time to rally all your interests about you & to paint & write for dear life.

I must admit fate has played strange tricks with me since last winter: I feel that I have definitely got into a new epoch of life and one feels extraordinarily helpless over it. How I should love one of our old afternoons again when we sat in your drawing room and discussed our tea and digestive biscuits: we were usually discontented over something but we had many a good laugh. As for the older days of real walks far away in the hills & journies out of town on the top of the tram–ma foi, that was the golden age infinitely remote ‘mais ou sont les neiges d’antan’.⁴ Perhaps you don’t believe that I want all that again, because other things more important have come in: but after all there is room for other things besides love in a man’s life. As well, you should trust in me after I have given you so much confidence.

How rude of me!–to come thus far without thanking you for your parcel. Let me hasten to do so. I am still reading the ‘Lavengro’ (although I’m sorry to say both books were rather crushed when they arrived) & like it very well though of course I am most violently out of sympathy with the author at times–when he is loudly patriotic (as in the idiotic passage about painters in chapter XXI) or when he indulges in vulgar invective against the parent church. Of course that is probably agreeable enough to you–eh?, old puritan. I am also reading Boswell vol. II and enjoy very much renewing my acquaintance with all these great old gentlemen. It is the ideal book to read out here and to keep me in touch with all the quiet literary pleasant things in the world–one feels so cut off at times among all these godless philistines. However I’m having an excellent time here doing nothing–if only it could last.

You are lucky you know; it must be grand to look forward to an endless prospect of regular nights’ sleep & comfortable chairs & good meals & books & everything decent & civilized.

Well, good bye for the present mon vieux, keep true to the old interests–and don’t let your relations influence you too much. You see I begin to fear for you now I can’t watch over you & guard you against evil!

Yours

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 282):

British Red Cross and Order of St. John⁵

[France]

9 February 1918

My dear P.,

Just a line. I am much better now and hope to be up in a few days. In spite of its alarming name, Pyrexia is not much more serious than influenza. I shouldn’t build on the idea of leave in which to recuperate, I’m afraid that’s only for people who have been very ill indeed. This little turn is however not a bad thing, as it has kept me out of the line and in a good bed for a season. I will write again and at greater length when I get up.

your loving,

son,

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

[No. 10 British Red Cross Hospital,

Le Tréport,

France]

12/2/18

My dear Galahad,

Your letter dated the 24th January 1917 (sic) arrived a few days ago. It has certainly been a famous time,–a year and a month–in coming.

Your account of the various meetings with your friend Mr Thompson reads rather like our Boswell. ‘I met him at luncheon at so-and-so: I dined with him at etc.’ From which you will gather that I am still reading my ‘Bozz-well’ (you remember the proper way of pronouncing it?) and enjoying it very much: it is such a rest to come back to after everything else. I also have a confession–to wit that I have given up Lavengro at any rate for the present. I gave up everything, of course, during a bad spell with high temperature which I have had since I last wrote to you: and now I feel no inclination to return to him. I don’t object to the scheme of the book; in fact I think that in other hands, say A. C. Benson’s, it might be charming. But my lack of sympathy with, nay by now my violent hostility to the author, prevents me from enjoying it. I expect you will think me rather foolish over this.

How do you like the tour to the Hebrides?⁶ That book follows naturally after one has read the Life. I remember taking up the Everyman copy of it in a shop in Oxford (oh! for those bookshops in ‘The Broad’–how we could ramble there!) & liking the paper and type.

I am sorry ‘Tommy’ has gone as he must have brightened up your ‘circle’ a good deal. <Are you still bound to him by the chains of desire as well as by ‘pure’ friendship?> I consider your reasons for not going to stay with him seem to me, with all due respect to be rot. A person with a weak heart may need quiet & may have to take care not to tire himself etc but Lord-a-mercy, short of actual hardships, why should he be more uncomfortable than other people? Of course you know best, but I must say if I ever thought you were refusing to come and stay with me for like cause I should think pretty poorly of your excuses–and your friendship. Not that I think you would, old man: I flatter myself that you could endure a few discomforts if we were together again.

‘Shall we ever be the same again’[?] Oh, how far we have travelled, you and I. To think of the things we’ve done: do you remember that day we walked up the glen in the rain, & everything was soaking? Or the evening up in Tiglath’s field at dusk–the only real evening walk we ever had? Or the days of scheming over Loki when I first shewed you any work of mine, and you used to play over bits from the unborn opera? And the night when we first broached the ‘nameless secrets of Aphrodite’ and walked up and down that bit of road in the dark? And now–well, umph. However, we may have good times yet, although I have been at a war and although I love someone.

You talk about the days of our book-discussing as being far off, but indeed I think they’re the only thing that has survived, I still want to hear all you are reading & I am still buying books. Apropos I have written home (London, I mean) for ‘The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini’ (Everyman) ⁷ which I’ll talk about some other time. Fancy you beginning to care for old books! I was beginning to love some of the old books in the college library at Univ. Of course London is the place, I suppose, for rumaging second hand shops.

You don’t tell me what you are reading: always remember that it keeps us in touch. I’m afraid you’ll be on very stodgy stuff–but then I’m getting stodgy too. After Benvenuto I’m thinking of reading Lockhart’s ‘Life of Scott’ or else a life of ‘G. Eliot’. Hers ought to be interesting. She had an affair with De Musset.⁸ Is there any other edition of Green’s Short History than the one that both our fathers have? Please answer this. Good bye now, old man, try to keep in touch and feel to me as you used to–

Yours

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 285–6):

No. 10 British Red Cross Hospital,

Le Tréport

16 February 1918

My dear Papy,

Your letter has remained unanswered for some time, and if I had literally fulfilled my promise of ‘writing when I got up’, I fear the time would have been longer still. ‘Trench fever’ sounds a formidable name enough–like ‘prison fever’ in the days of the Bloody Assize I always think, but it is not usually a troublesome business. In this country it is called P.U.O. which, I am told, stands for ‘Pyrexia unknown origin’: which in plain English means merely a high temperature arising from the general irregularity of life at the front. In my case however, after they had got me down to normal, I had a relapse, and was pretty ill for a day or two. I am now however on the highroad to recovery, though still in bed. I consider this little turn as an unmixed blessing: even if I get no leave by it–and I’m afraid that is not very likely–I shall have had a comfortable rest from the line. The place where I have been dropped down is a little fishing village so far as I can make out. There are cliffs and a grey sea beyond–which one is very glad to see again–and from my own window pleasant wooded country. They tell me Dieppe is about eighteen miles away: and that makes one remember…eheu fugaces!⁹

This is indeed distressing news about Gunny: I hope the successful backwoodsman does not propose to return to his native heath with his booty, when the war is over.¹⁰ However, we must rejoice that our qualms about a certain Hebrew neighbour were baseless. How is Cousin Quartus–he was in a poor way when I left home.

By the way (I can’t remember whether I told you before or not) the Captain of the Company I am in is the Harris who used to be a master at Cherbourg: I think you met him once. He impressed me in those days, but I find him very disappointing. I wonder is it my own fault that so many of my old acquaintances I have run up against since leaving my shell at Bookham ‘Please me not’? I suppose these things are to be expected.¹¹

You kindly ask if there is anything you could send. The next time you are in Mulllan’s, I should be ‘beholden’ if you would ask them to look out some cheap edition of Burton’s ‘Anatomy of Melancholy’ and send it to me, or the 1st. volume of it. You remember it used to be a fancy of mine, and somebody has recommended it to me lately. If the only edition is in a fairly large book, let them send it all the same–I can find room for it. What are you reading? You see I make some desperate attempt to keep in touch with a life beyond the one which we lead here. I hope you keep well in body: so long as I am in hospital you may keep easy in mind. How I wish your hopes about leave could be realized. Of course it is possible, but I don’t think there is much chance. By the way, offer Warnie all my congratulations upon his recent glories when next you write. That at least is a blessing: he won’t be doing badly in the soldiering line if he is to be a Captain after the war at his age. Well good bye for the present: write soon again.

your loving

son Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

[No. 10 British Red Cross Hospital]

21/2/18

My dear Galahad,

Your last letter would have been answered earlier but for two reasons. 1, that as my last apparently crossed yours I thought you had something to go on with; 2 when I had actually started writing to you the other day, duty suddenly called to me and made me write to M. mon père instead. So you see your good precepts have stood in your own way!

I will dispose of the immensely uninteresting subject of my own health shortly–I am up again now and was out for the first time yesterday. Indeed I am beginning to tremble as to how long I shall be left here–but of course I may have the good luck of another relapse: but I doubt it, the gods hate me–and naturally enough considering my usual attitude towards them.

The country round, so far as I could see in yesterday’s walk, quite comes up to expectation. I in vain tried to get onto a road leading to the cliffs and the sea, but, like the house in ‘Alice in Wonderland’ they evaded me. I struck a very pretty little village however: the houses are mostly clay walled, which gives them a lovely colour, and are very ramshakle. The roofs are all of old old tiles and there are lots of old stone crucifixes, with their little offerings of grass & beads & things on them. Catholic Christianity is certainly more picturesque than puritanism. But what pleased me most was an old granary with little kinds of arrow slits under the eaves through which you could see oats or corn or whatever it was projecting: it gave you the impression of the place being filled to bursting and was somehow very homely, snug and comfortable. There are also pigeons all over the place, lodged in dovecots of the real old type that you see in pictures. Another nice thing was the orchards, where you could look along the bright grass among the tree stems–very like our wood at home just above and beyond the vicious dog. Wandering about the sleepy country reminded me of Bookham days–what a paradise of peace and quiet interests that was with our weekly letters so full of life & always following up some new idea.

I hardly realized till your last letter that of course from your present liesure you must look back with a kind of horror to the days when you had to go into town. Yet we had a few minutes of ‘good talk’ sometimes in that sordid old office–which, by the way, if I had a bunk in one corner, I should now regard as an almost incredibly luxurious billet–actually windows and a fireplace.

I am longing to see those old English romances of yours: I think that is the kind of book I had rather hunt out second hand than buy brand new and obvious in a shop. If, as I imagine from your account they suffer from being too thin, could you not have them bound together in some good solemn half leather & strong boards. The girl in Ovenell’s, Broad St., Oxford assured me they could make a good job of binding books together like that. I am sure your cautious soul would never risk it, but I think you’d be quite safe in sending them to Ovenell’s with instructions. She would understand & a good shop like that would certainly do it with taste. If it suits the style of the book you could have a guilt top as well.

I wait anxiously for your answer as to there being any other edition of Green’s Short History–but I’m afraid there is NOT. I feel inclined to read history somehow. By the way I must recommend the ‘Autobiography’ of Benvenuto Cellini which I am now three quarters way through. I expect you know who he was–a Florentine designer born in 1500. The book professes to be a sober ‘life’ but seems to me most impossible. He lives like a character in a Dumas novel: he is often attacked in the street by five or six men, all of whom he kills wounds, or puts to flight: he is shut up in a castle (with a ‘castellan’ who is mad & imagines himself to be a bat), and makes a most wonderful escape–letting himself down by a rope of sheets of course–He goes with a magician to practice sorcery in the ruins of the Colisseum and after the magician had ‘conjured for more than two hours many thousands of spirits began to appear’ so that the whole amphitheatre was full of them threatening to come inside the magic circle. And perhaps what would appeal to you most is the background of great historical figures by whom he is patronized–two popes, cardinals both of France and Italy, Lorenzo & Cosimo de’ Medici, the King of France and his powerful & spiteful mistress Madame d’Etampes, the Emperor. It is like a grand historical romance, with the added pleasure that it is, at least for the most part, true: how I look forward to reading it in the Italian when (and if) I get back to real life. It is also a good Everyman speciman: the paper is thin & crisp, the print just a comfortable size & the margins larger than usual–making a very pretty page. But I could talk forever about it. I should very, very strongly recommend you to get it as in the historical way it may appeal to you even more than to me. <It touches in one place tho’ very briefly on your penchant, and is from time to time interesting in ‘that way’.> I expect you are now heartily sick of the subject!

The 1st volume of Johnson has arrived and I am now started on it: I also discovered among the piles of trash of the hospital Blackwood’s ‘Incredible Adventures’¹² and a ragged copy containing some of Tennyson. Of the former I have read 2 stories, excellent of his style but I feel it a waste of time in these precious days. Tennyson, too, never raises any great enthusiasm in me. I am starting G. Eliot’s ‘Middlemarch’¹³ to night. So, you see I am in clover. Do write soon again or I shall begin to feel neglected–

Yours

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 291–2):

[No. 10 British Red Cross Hospital,]

Le Tréport

22 February 1918

My dear Papy,

Your letter of the 17th has just arrived, with the enclosure, for which many thanks: a widening experience of other people’s parents has taught me to value these things more than I once did, both for themselves and what they mean. That suggests literary possibilities: there is already a book called ‘Other people’s children’,¹⁴ but why not a companion volume ‘Other people’s parents’–in our schooldays we have most of us suffered from time to time at the hands of these irrelevant beings.

It is one of the punishments–to be sure, richly deserved–of a bad correspondant, that when at last he does write, his letter usually crosses the next one from his victim. I hope that you have before this got the longer letter which apparently had not come when you wrote yours.

I don’t think there is need to worry if at any future time you hear of my being in hospital merely with illness. Even supposing it to be fairly serious, it is a more natural and easy kind of danger than that of the front: as well, there is always the rest, the unaccustomed comforts, and at the end the possibility of leave. In this case I am afraid I have not been bad enough.

I am sending you in this two photographs of my room at Univ. They were taken by my friend Moore shortly before I left Oxford, but remained undeveloped for a long time and have lately been sent to me by his mother. The room is not of much personal interest, as everything in it belonged to another man–I think I mentioned that at the time. But I daresay you may care to see them. Do you remember it used to be one of my dreams that I might some day entertain you and the Knock there together. As you said, ‘That would be a symposium of the gods’. What crack there would have been! With what an added zest we would have drunk in the man’s ‘statements of fact’ in the hope of chuckling over them between ourselves later on. Who knows? At any rate we can hope that you and I will some time see Oxford together.

The picture of our Warnie attending an A-murican proffessor’s lecture from the chair of Poker is good. But I’m afraid the psychology of the card player will always baffle me as it has baffled you. I had as soon spend the evening building card houses–much sooner watch the picture in the red of the fire.

I have discovered that optimism about the war increases in an inverse ratio to the optimist’s proximity to the line. Was our Colonel so hopeful a month ago? But indeed I’m afraid I must live up to our family reputation, for certainly I can’t see any bright prospects at present. The conditions at home are almost as bad as anything we once fabled of starvation in Germany: spirits will be more pacific every day on short commons: there seems to be ‘spiritual wickedness in high places’¹⁵ (I think it was Smugy who told us that this text should be rendered ‘wickedness of spirits in the upper regions of the air’–Satan being ‘Prince of the air’ and the evil hosts finding there the parade ground par excellence).

Poor old Mr. Patterson! As you say, we cannot miss a single detail out of the picture of home without a sense of regret. The longer we are absent from it and the more different the scenes in which we are compelled to live, the more eagerly we prize even its most irrelevant features. The sight of Campbell across the fields–the hideous palm like thing beside the front avenue–the broken glass in the etching in the upstairs passage. Mr. Patterson was en[titled] to some fame too for his famous mot ‘Not convenient’. We avoided him often in our walks and are sorry that there will be no necessity to avoid him again.¹⁶ He was, in short, one of the ‘old familiar faces’.¹⁷

Now there is a thing we quote very often, but I never read till the other day the little poem of Lambs from which it comes: I don’t know if you were in the same plight: if so, it would give you a few minutes pleasure–if it is in any of our imperfect editions of Lamb.

I am ordering a couple of books of Vergil from my bookseller in London, and if I find that I get on with these I shall order something equally pleasant and simple in Greek. German and Italian I fear must go to the wall: of course I read a French book from time to time and seek opportunities of speaking it–but one sees very little of the natives. I am also still at Boswell, and have also begun ‘Middlemarch’. You see I am quite ‘caught’ by George Eliot’s books.

I have now almost written my pen out of ink, and–perhaps my reader out of patience: but ‘out of the abundance of the heart’¹⁸ and as well there will be days when I cannot write much. I have been out once or twice, and can’t say how much longer I shall be here. Write as often and as long (grammar!) as you can.

your loving,

son Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 301):

[France

5 March 1918]

My dear Papy,

I have been living at such a rush since I left hospital that it needed this battle and your probable anxiety to make me write. I am out of the fighting area, but of course we are not enjoying the old peaceful trench warfare I knew before Le Treport. We have just come back from a four days tour in the front line during which I had about as many hours sleep: then when we got back to this soi-disant rest, we spent the whole night digging. Under these conditions I know you will excuse me from much letter writing: but I will try and let you know that I am safe from time to time.

your loving son

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 304):

[France]

8 April 1918

My dear Papy,

Just another hurried line to tell you that I am still safe and well. We have had a fairly rough time, though we were not really in the thick of it. I have lost one or two of my best friends and in particular a fellow called Perrett who used to be at Malvern, and who got a bit in the eye. It is a long time since I heard from you.

your loving son

Jack

 

The Germans launched their great spring offensive on 21 March with the additional troops drawn from the Eastern Front following the collapse of Russia. This was the worst crisis of the war and it galvanized the War Cabinet into action. The Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, took over the direction of the War Office on 23 March and the nation was soon transporting 30,000 men a day to France. Even so, the Allies were disintegrating, and on 3 April Marshal Foch took over supreme command. He was just able to halt the advance of the Germans when they were within 40 miles of Paris. ‘With our backs to the wall and believing in the justice of our case, each must fight to the end,’ declared Field Marshal Douglas Haig, chief of the British forces on the Western Front. The Germans’ second putsch came on 9 to 25 April. On 3 April Lewis was among those who took part in the Battle of Arras. The particular part of the battle he took part in was centred on Riez du Vinage. In his official History of the 1st Battalion The Somerset Light Infantry (Prince Albert’s) July 1st 1916 to the end of the War, Everard Wyrall gives an account of the battle that took place between 14 and 16 April:

As the leading Somerset men approached the eastern exits of Riez, the enemy launched a counter-attack from east of the village and the northern end of the Bois de Pacaut. This counter-attack was at once engaged with Lewis-gun and rifle fire and about 50 per cent of the Germans were shot down. Of the remainder about half ran away and the other half ran towards the Somerset men with their hands in the air crying out ‘Kamerad!’ and were made prisoners…

When dawn broke on the 15th a considerable number of Germans in full marching order were seen: they were advancing in twos and threes into shell holes from houses north and north-east of Riez and from the northern end of Bois de Pacaut. Heavy rifle fire and Lewis-gun fire was opened on them, serious casualties being inflicted, and if a serious counter-attack was intended it was definitely broken up, for no further action was taken by the evening: his stretcher-bearers were busy for the rest of the day…

About noon on the 16th the enemy opened a trench-mortar and artillery fire on the line held by the Somerset men…A little later he was observed massing immediately north-east of Riez with the obvious intention of wresting the village from the Somersets…About 2 p.m. the Germans were seen retiring in twos and threes: they had given up the struggle, having found the stout opposition put up by the Somersets impossible to break down. The results of this minor enterprise were splendid: (i) The village of Riez du Vinage had been captured; (ii) a battery of British field guns and a battery of 4.5 howitzers, taken by the enemy, had been recaptured; (iii) sixteen light machine guns and four heavy machine guns were taken: a Vickers gun was also recaptured–making a total of 21; (iv) a heavy mortar on wheels was taken, but it was not possible to get it away before the Somersets were relieved; (v) at least one German battalion, or the equivalent, was put out of action; 135 prisoners were taken: 60 dead Germans were seen in the village and probably 200 other casualties were inflicted on the enemy. A statement in the Battalion Diary, however, to the effect that ‘never before have such targets been presented, or such execution done by the bullet’, is hardly correct, for during the War there were many instances of the enemy’s troops advancing in massed formation and being shot down in hundreds, if not in thousands. That the Somerset men had taken full advantage of the opportunities presented them, is shown by the fact that one Lewis gunner fired 2,000 rounds from his gun during the period, whilst a rifleman fired in one day from his own rifle 400 rounds.

The casualties of the 1st Battalion between 14th and 16th April were: 2/Lieut. L. B. Johnson died of wounds (15/4/18) and 2/Lieuts. C. S. Lewis, A. G. Rawlence, J. R. Hill and C. S. Dowding wounded: in other ranks the estimated losses were 210 killed, wounded and missing. (pp. 293–5)

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 307):

[Liverpool Merchants Mobile Hospital,

Étaples]

16 April 1918

My dear Papy,

I am slightly wounded and am now in Hospital and will let you know my definite address as soon as possible.

yours,

Jack¹⁹

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 307):

[Liverpool Merchants Mobile Hospital,

Étaples]

17 April 1918

My dear P.,

I have come down the line and my address is ‘Liverpool Merchants Mobile Hospital, Etaples’. Getting on all right but cant write properly yet as my left arm is still tied up and its hard to manage with one. Please write soon.

your loving son,

Jack

 

Shortly after Jack was taken to the hospital at Étaples, on the Strait of Dover, his father received a telegram from the War Office saying: ‘2nd. Lt.C. S. Lewis Somerset Light Infantry wounded April fifteenth’ (LP V: 308). Albert interpreted this to mean ‘severely wounded’, and was of course very worried. Warnie, having completed the course at the Mechanical Transport School of Instruction, had been stationed at a camp near the village of Behucourt near Doullens since 8 March. On learning from his father on 24 April that Jack had been ‘severely wounded’, he borrowed a motor bike and rode the 50 miles from Doullens through Frévent, Hesdin and Montreuil to the hospital at Étaples. ‘You can’t let your mind dwell on imaginary fears,’ he told his father on 13 May, ‘when you are trying to get your best out of machinery–roaring along the straight bits of road and nursing your engine over the rough’ (LP V: 315). He made the return trip as soon as he had seen his brother, and writing to his father on the evening of 24 April, he said:

I don’t know who was responsible for the phrase ‘severely wounded’, but it gave me a desperately bad fright. As a matter of fact you will be glad to hear that [Jack] is not much the worse, and is in better spirits than I have seen him for a long time. He was in great fettle and we had a long crack…A shell burst close to where he was standing, killing a Sergeant, and luckily for ‘It’ [Jack] he only stopped three bits: one in the cheek and two in the hands: he then crawled back and was picked up by a stretcher bearer. (LP V: 309)

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 312–13):

[Liverpool Merchants Mobile Hospital,

Étaples]

4 May [1918]

My dear Papy,

Many thanks for the smokes and also for the letter which I was particularly glad to get, as I had not heard from you for so long. I am very sorry–and angry–that you [have] been through a lot of unnecessary worry and anxiety owing to the carelessness of some fool at the War Office, who–as Arthur informs me–told you some rubbish about my being hit in both arms and in the face.

As a matter of fact I was really hit in the back of the left hand, on the left leg from behind and just above the knee, and in the left side just under the arm pit. All three were only flesh wounds. The myth about being hit in the face arose, I imagine, from the fact that I got a lot of dirt in the left eye which was closed up for a few days, but is now alright. I still can’t lie on my side (neither the bad one nor the other one) but otherwise I lead the life of an ordinary mortal and my temperature is alright. So there is no need for any anxiety at all.

I was surprised the day before yesterday by a visit from two ladies–a Miss McConnell and a friend. Apparently you know her brother. Ought I to? For the life of me I can’t remember any one of that name. Whoever she is she was very agreeable and it didn’t make any difference.

The correspondants of mine–Mrs. Moore and a man called Johns in the Somersets–seem to think that a number of letters to me were sent to my home address when I first went to Le Treport. If you have any letters of mine, will you please send them on? I suppose they haven’t been silly enough to send my valise home have they?

Warnie has been down to see me and seems in good health and spirits. If only leave would start again he might manage to be at home with me as he is due for it now.

I hope you are keeping well and not worrying about me, for as you see, I am getting on excellently.

your loving son

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 316–17):

Same adress.

[Étaples] 14/6/18

[14 May 1918]

My dear Papy,

Thank you for the letter, the enclosure, and the other ‘far wandered’ letters. I must confess that when Warnie turned up here I didn’t realise through what possible difficulties or by what exertions he had come: I understand now ‘video proboque’.²⁰ I expect to be sent across in a few days time, of course as a stretcher case: indeed whatever my condition they would have to send me in that way, because I have no clothes. This is a standing joke out here–the mania which people at the dressing stations have for cutting off a wounded man’s clothes whether there is any need for it or not. In my case the tunic was probably beyond hope, but I admit that I mourn the undeserved fate of my breeches. Unfortunately I was unconscious when the sacrilege took place and could not very well argue the point.

I am doing exceedingly well and can lie on my right side (not of course on my left), which is a great treat after you have been on your back for a few weeks. In one respect I was wrong in my last account of my wounds: the one under my arm is worse than a flesh wound, as the bit of metal which went in there is now in my chest, high up under my ‘pigeon chest’ as shown: this however is nothing to worry about as it is doing no harm. They will leave it there and I am told that I can carry it about for the rest of my life without any evil results.

Aunt Lily²¹ keeps up a sharp fire of literature–Browning, Emerson, Mill (on ‘the subjection of women”)²² and ‘The Scotsman’. How on earth can I be supposed to be interested in ‘The Scotsman’? However there are one or two Scotch patients here to whom I hand it over: so I can truthfully tell her that they ‘are read and enjoyed’.

My friend Mrs Moore is in great trouble–Paddy has been missing for over a month and is almost certainly dead. Of all my own particular set at Keble he has been the first to go, and it is pathetic to remember that he at least was always certain that he would come through.

In spite of Aunt Lily’s library I have been battening on other fare. ‘Old Mortality’²³ which I found disappointing, and now ‘Barchester Towers’²⁴ with which I am delighted. This brings me to Martha’s wedding.²⁵ (The connection being ‘What a pity that she too has not married a Bishop, since she could run a diocese at least as well as Mrs. Proudie’).²⁶ Give her any message from me which you think suitable. Hoping that you keep well and cheerful, I am,

your loving

son

Jack

 

Although his mother did not receive confirmation until September, Paddy Moore died in March 1918 during the battle at Pargny. The story of his part in the war was summarized, from information supplied by Mrs Moore, in his school magazine The Cliftonian, No. CCXCV (May 1918), p. 225:

2nd-Lieutenant E.F.C. Moore. He joined the Rifle Brigade after the usual training, and was in action in France in the great German attack which began on March 21. He was reported missing on March 24, and it is now feared that he cannot have escaped with his life. The Adjutant of his battalion writes: ‘I have to tell you that your very gallant son was reported missing on the 24th of last month. He was last seen on the morning of that day with a few men defending a position on a river bank against infinitely superior numbers of the enemy. All the other officers and most of the men of his company have become casualties, and I fear it is impossible to obtain more definite information. He did really fine work on the previous night in beating off a party of Germans who had succeeded in rushing a bridgehead in our lines. We all feel his loss very deeply, and I cannot express too strongly our sympathy with you.’

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

[Liverpool Merchants Mobile Hospital,

Étaples

23 May 1918]

My dear Arthur,

I was so glad to get your answer to day as it is the first ‘answer’ I’ve had for a long time–thro’ my own neglect I admit.

I think your criticisms on my ‘Literary Supplement’ letter²⁷ were quite just, but I must give two reasons why I was led to write in such a style. In the first place I was rather stung by your gratuitous supposition that I had become a ‘cheer-oh young man’, and this naturally urged me into the opposite extreme of being what somebody calls ‘a university prize prig’. Of course I don’t mean to say that I didn’t write throughout of things that really interested me and which I expected to interest you: but the general tone was probably influenced by that feeling. The second reason is this. The personal element naturally found a large field in my letters from Bookham and Univ. where all my life and surroundings were of interest to us both: but here, where everything I do & suffer is dull and repulsive, I don’t turn to description and details which would bore me to write and–probably–you to read. If you think that I look to you only for abstract interests and no longer yearn for the old intimacy, the teas, the laughter the walks and the comparing of books–you are very much mistaken, mon ami.

(Talking about comparing of books, if you are still minded to sell your Trollope you will now find a purchaser in me. A chance copy of ‘Barchester Towers’ has quite converted me and I am now all a-gog to read his others, so that I will certainly take your whole set if I may. By the way, this is an advantage–the only one–of being in the army: I have always plenty of money for anything I want. To any one in my irresponsible position the despised pay of a second lieutenant is a never-empty purse, unless he chooses to waste it on prostitutes, restaurants and tailors, as the gentiles do.)

When I see you face to face I will tell you any war impressions quite freely at your request–and not otherwise: for it is very proper that you should make use of me if you ever happen to want to know how certain things feel–but on the other hand there is no reason why I should bore you with a subject that we have always disliked, if you do not want.

Congratulations old man. I am delighted that you have had the moral courage to form your own opinions <independently,> in defiance of the old taboos. I am not sure that I agree with you: but, as you hint in your letter, <this penchant is a sort of mystery only to be fully understood by those who are made that way–and my views on it can be at best but emotion.>

You will be surprised and I expect, not a little amused to hear that my views at present are getting almost monastic about all the lusts of the flesh. They seem to me to extend the dominion of matter over us: and, out here, where I see spirit continually dodging matter (shells, bullets, animal fears, animal pains) I have formulated my equation Matter= Nature=Satan. And on the other side Beauty, the only spiritual & not-natural thing that I have yet found. Does all this bore you?

I think my stilted style must be due to the fact that I read ‘Old Mortality’ a short time ago and am at present in the midst of ‘Guy Mannering’. The former I thought very disappointing but am quite pleased with the latter, tho’, truth to tell, I enjoyed ‘Barchester Towers’ much more. I have got here but not yet begun Blackwood’s new book ‘The Promise of the Air’:²⁸ perhaps you read the verdict of the Times L.S. that this is his first really serious book.²⁹ I hope it may be true.

Strange! how wrongly one can read the simplest sentence: just reading over part of your letter I have realised for the first time that when you say you were ‘driven’ to town you mean driven in the car: I thought you meant ‘driven’ by circumstances of some sort. Now theres one of those little things which are useless on paper but would have made us roar with laughter if we were together.

By the way, are you allowed to go up & downstairs freely these days? If so, it occurs to me that it would be a very good idea for you to act as a sort of librarian to the little-end-room when I return to my penance. I mean, the key would be left in the bookcase and I should like you to go there frequently & see that they were alright, and borrow or examine anything you wanted & put in suitable places any new volumes I sent you. This would keep me in touch with my books to some extent and save the room from looking disused when I come back. What do you say?

I have only come across a few references to the Dorian customs: I hope Carpenter does not fall into the error common to enthusiasts, of reading into ancient institutions more than is really there. However, of course I have never studied the subject and can’t give an opinion.

I was to have been sent across to England last night, but we were heavily bombed, so of course all traffic stopped. It is interesting to note that an air-raid here frightened me much more than anything I encountered at the front: you feel so helpless in bed, knowing you can’t walk or anything even if you get out of it. Unless the same things happen again I shall probably go, or at least the night after. I suppose it would be out of the question for you to come and see me in hospital in England for a few days? It would be a great something to look forward to & it would give you an opportunity to meet Mrs Moore.

I am tired now, old man, after a very disturbed night & a stifling day so I will dry up & just enclose a little song I wrote the other day, which I hope you will approve–

Yours ever

Jack

Song

Faeries must be in the woods

Or the satyr’s merry broods,

Tritons in the summer sea,

Else how could the dead things be

Half so lovely as they are?

How could wreathèd star on star

Dusted o’er the wintry night,

Fill thy spirit with delight

And lead thee from this care of thine

Through a land of dreams divine

To the dearest heart’s-desire,

Unless each pale & drifting fire

Were indeed a happy isle

Where eternal gardens smile

And golden globes of fruit are seen

Twinkling thro’ the orchards green

Where the Other People go

On the soft sward to and fro?

Atoms dead could never thus

Wake the human heart of us,

Unless the beauty that we see

Part of endless beauty be,

Thronged with spirits that have trod

Where the bright foot-prints of God

Lie fresh upon the heavenly sod.³⁰

TELEGRAM TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 319):

25 May 1918

Am in Endsleigh Palace Hospital, Endsleigh Gardens, London, Jack.

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

[Endsleigh Palace Hospital,

Endsleigh Gardens,

London

29 May 1918]

Cher Ami,

I am sitting up in bed in the middle of a red sunset to answer this evening’s letter straightaway. Your letters set me thinking of so many old interests that I cannot go on with my book.

First a word or two as to my present estate: I am in a vastly comfortable hospital, where we are in separate rooms & have tea in the morning & big broad beds & everything the heart of man could desire and best of all, in close communication with all the bookshops of London. Of course you can easily understand what other and greater reasons there are for me to be happy. There are still two pieces of shrapnel in my chest, but they give me no discomfort: <Mrs Moore and> I are always hoping that it will start to give some trouble and thus secure me a longer illness (This is quite like the Malvern days again, isn’t it?).

The thing in your last letter with which I most want to disagree is the remark about Beauty and nature; apparently I did not make myself very clear. You say that nature is beautiful, and that is the view we all start with. But let us see what we mean. If you take a tree, for instance, you call it beautiful because of its shape, colour and motions, and perhaps a little because of association. Now these colours etc are sensations in my eye, produced by vibrations on the aether between me and the tree: the real tree is something quite different–a combination of colourless, shapeless, invisible atoms. It follows then that neither the tree, nor any other material object can be beautiful in itself: I can never see them as they are, and if I could it would give me no delight. The beauty therefore is not in matter at all, but is something purely spiritual, arising mysteriously out of the relation between me & the tree: or perhaps as I suggest in my Song, out of some indwelling spirit behind the matter of the tree–the Dryad in fact.

You see the conviction is gaining ground on me that after all Spirit does exist; and that we come in contact with the spiritual element by means of these ‘thrills’. I fancy that there is Something right outside time & place, which did not create matter, as the Christians say, but is matter’s great enemy: and that Beauty is the call of the spirit in that something to the spirit in us. You see how frankly I admit that my views have changed: I hope I don’t bore you.

<I admit the associations of the word paederasty are unfortunate but you should rise above that. As well what does ‘Uranian’ mean–it ought to mean ‘Heavenly’ as far as my knowledge goes, and I will stick to the word that I understand in preference.>

I don’t agree with you about Trollope’s being mamby pamby: in fact the sentimental part seems to me very slightly sketched and only to serve as a turning point for all the delightful ‘Austinesque’ work about the Mrs Proudie’s etc. I have now read the ‘Warden’ and am more than half way through ‘Dr Thorne’.³¹ I cannot understand why you got tired of him, I should have thought he was so very much in your line: but indeed one can never really say what will please another person.

I told you I was reading Blackwood’s new one ‘The Promise of Air’: it is very disappointing, being merely a long & tedious expansion of a theory that could have been explained in a single essay. Although it is in story form nothing ever happens: I’m afraid if he goes on being ‘serious’ after this fashion we shall have lost a good romancer for a bad mystic.

Can you imagine how I enjoyed my journey to London? First of all the sight and smell of the sea, that I have missed for so many long and weary months, and then the beautiful green country seen from the train: I suppose its because I’ve been shut up in a hut so long, but I think I never enjoyed anything so much as that scenery–all the white in the hedges, and the fields so full of buttercups that in the distance they seemed to be of solid gold: and everything such a bright, bright green. I am sure our hills look lovely now and the wood must be full of life and sweet smells.

Yes, after all our old conversations I can feel otherwise about the lusts of the flesh: is not desire merely a kind of sugar-plum that nature gives us to make us breed, as she does the beetles and toads so that both we and they may beget more creatures to struggle in the same net: Nature, or the common order of things, has really produced in man a sort of Frankenstein who is learning to shake her off. For man alone of all things can master his instincts.

From my window I see a big flat plain of houses and beyond that actually a green hill with trees on it, which I am told is the aristocratic district of High Hampstead. In the foreground is the Euston station hotel–bringing old, old memories. ‘Mais ou sont les neiges.’

Your quotation from Pater expresses my attitude to philosophy exactly: I don’t really think it will teach me the truth, but I do think it will supply me with thoughts & feelings that I may be able to turn into poetry. As you turn all kinds of nourishment into blood. I was glad to see Willie (I suppose ‘Bill’ since his marriage) ³² he seems in good form.

Good bye, old man, write by return.

Yours ever

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 320–1):

Endsleigh Gardens.

[London]

30 May 1918

My dear Papy,

I hope that you got my telegram and that I will soon hear from you, and not only hear but receive a visit in the aristocratic neighbourhood of Euston. You will be able to come over, will you not, if only for a few days? We must get Kirk up to meet you and have a famous crack. In the meantime, will you please send me my new brown suit, and also, if possible, a pair of black brogue shoes: I ought to have several. It is allowed to wear ordinary clothes here until I can get a uniform made. This is merely a note, as you are already heavily in my debt in the matter of letters. Hoping to hear soon, I am

your loving son

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

[Endsleigh Palace Hospital,

London

3 June 1918]

My dear Arthur,

Your letter of the 1st arrived this morning. I am very sorry that you are getting bored with our ‘tree’ argument (the Dry Tree as it might well be called from the nature of the discussions to which it gives rise) for I am afraid I cannot let the subject drop without refuting the heresies which you started in to-day’s letter.

First, as to the colour of the atom, I would remind you that atoms are regarded as all identically the same–as the original world-stuff, and if therefore they had colour all things would be coloured the same. And to analyse colour ninety-two million miles away the action of certain vibrations in the sun sets up a wave on the ether which travels to the atom under your consideration: this sets up certain other vibrations in the atom which again sends off another wave along the ether towards your eye. When this reaches the tissue of your eye it sets up more action which travels along a nerve and produces in your brain a sensation which we call greenness. Here for the first time we reach the colour–in your brain, not in all these vibrations of atoms. Magnify your atom to infinity, and still your consciousness has no direct communion with it. All you can ever say is that certain sensations arise in your brain: you suppose (which in itself was doubted by Berkeley and other idealists) that there is some exterior cause for these: but what that exterior cause is like in itself you do not know and never can know. Suppose this vibration from the atom never happened to strike an eye, but went on for ever into space–where then is your greenness? No–the whole exterior world can only make itself known to us by certain sensations which it produces on our brain in a complicated manner, and it is simply a habit of mind which makes us call these impressions (colour, shape, sound etc) the thing-in-itself. Hence as I said before, beauty cannot be in the material thing.

Of course there is another simpler argument, without going into abstruse regions. If beauty were really in the tree, then two people who both had normal eyes would be bound to see the same beauty. But nothing is easier than to find two people one of whom would see beauty and the other see no beauty in the same tree. Therefore the beauty cannot be in the tree but in some obscure and non-material point of view or relation between the mind of the perciever and the sensations which the tree–very indirectly–causes in that mind. I have done: are you bored beyond endurance?

Perhaps you feel that we are wandering away from the grounds that supplied our earlier interests in common and first brought us together. I hope not: I like to think of our interests as a circle which may increase in size but whose centre is always the same. For myself I think I am true to the old cannons–romantic beauty, eeriness, terror, homeliness, solidity–& absurdity. These were the gods we worshipped in the golden age, were they not mon vieux?

By the same token, I have been reading since this morning an incomparably homely book, of which I am having a copy sent to you–‘The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft’ by G. Gissing (Constable 1/-).³³ Gissing’s name I have often heard, but I have no idea what else he wrote. This is a collection of very loose, spontaneous essays, about books and other quiet interests–including food. He has some splendid things to say about the glory of ‘tea’, so homely & cheery after a long walk. There is hardly a bad piece in the whole book, and it is a very companionable volume to fill up the spaces of serious reading with, or to read over a lonely meal.

Are you lonely these days, or are you over-much oppressed with visitors? I should like to hear from you a fuller account of your cousin Gribbon: I remember him–with a shudder–at Campbell. I hear he is enormously clever and knows all things: I expect he will pulverize me–rusted as I am with a year’s barbarity–if I should ever meet him.³⁴ But I mustn’t talk thus or you will perhaps think, like somebody in a French play ‘que je vous fasse l’honneur d’etre jaloux’.³⁵

Spenser, I am sure, would be greatly surprised to hear that Britomart was a type of [illegible]–considering she is represented as loving Arte-gall the knight of Justice; I don’t remember her being described as having a ‘man’s heart’ in the real Faerie Queene, and the book which you mention probably uses that phraze in the conventional sense as ‘having a man’s courage’. But how I love to hear you say ‘I came across so-and-so in a book this morning’: it conjures up such visions of those old happy hours when I sat surrounded by my little library and browsed from book to book. You, who have never lost that life, cannot understand the longing with which I look back to it.

By the way, haven’t you got a reddy-brown MS. book of mine containing ‘Lullaby’ and several other of my later poems? I wish you would send it here, as I have decided to copy out all my work of which I approve and get it typed as a step towards possible publishing. Even if nobody will have them a complete typed copy would be a great convenience.

Wouldn’t it be glorious if I were writing you the last letter of a term at Bookham, perhaps with an ‘instalment’, with all the rich harvest of the pleasant term behind me and the glorious liesure of the long summer holidays (with after dinner walks to the shrine of Tigliath-Pileser) before me. I knew then that those were good days, but I think now that I didn’t prize them enough. Ahem!, the sunset appears to be making me sentimental: & yet its not sentiment at all but very certain truth. Doesn’t the word ‘ahem’ breathe of old-fashioned novels?

You accuse me of talking, ‘as your own father might talk’: and perhaps that is one thing you may find in me now–a vein of asceticism, almost of puritan practice without the puritan dogma. I believe in no God, least of all in one that would punish me for the ‘lusts of the flesh’:³⁶ but I do believe that I have in me a spirit, a chip, shall we say, of universal spirit; and that, since all good & joyful things are spiritual & non-material, I must be careful not to let matter (= nature = Satan, remember) get too great a hold on me, & dull the one spark I have.

Yours ever

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 326–7):

Endsleigh Palace Hospital

[London]

12 June 1918

My dear Papy,

Thank you for both the letters, as the ‘essay with enclosures’ has followed me here, and indeed arrived shortly after the one I wrote, venturing to suggest that my score of letters was still one up. Peccavi: I most humbly apologise. ‘And you wid a bronchitis in you.’ (By the way it is not a whole shell in me, only a bit of one.) Seriously, I hope that before this you have got over any suggestion of the old trouble: you cannot be too careful in warding it off.

The brown suit arrived safely, together with some collars and ties which I had forgotten to ask for, but which either you or Mary had thoughtfully put in. I am now up and dressed and have been out a few times: you can well imagine how delightful it is for me to wear decent clothes again–to have pockets without buttons, and to be able to change one’s tie from day to day. I have written to the transport officer of the battalion about my valise, but so far there is no answer: poor man, I expect he has other things to think about than my kit. And–who knows–perhaps even now a Teutonic unter offizier is sleeping in my blankets and improving his English on my bits of books.³⁷ Which reminds me, though the reproach is usually the other way, on the only occasion when we took any prisoners, I was able to talk a little German to their officer, though he could speak no English to me.

My first day out here was enlivened by a taxi accident–some girl with a lorry ran into the cab in which I was, causing considerable damage to both machines but doing no harm otherwise. Since then I have had a solicitor’s clerk round here asking me interminable questions: I have often been reminded of your friend’s answer, ‘I thought some damned fool would be sure to ask me, so I measured’. I consider that when the fates arrange little varieties of this sort for a man in search of peace, it is a very doubtful ‘jeu d’esprit’.

I have since added to my new knowledge of Trollope ‘The Warden’ and ‘Dr. Thorne’. Although it may seem strange that Warnie and I both neglect books that are at home and then afterwards read them elsewhere, there is a reason. A book must find you in the right mood, and its mere presence on a shelf will not create that mood, tho’ it lie there for years: as well, when you meet ‘in a strange land’³⁸ a book that is associated with home, it has for that very reason an attraction which it would not have at ordinary times. I am now at work, and very much at work on Hume’s ‘Treatise of Human Nature’,³⁹ a new Maeterlinck and a new volume of Swinburne. I keep up a very brisk fire of correspondence on Literary and pseudo-scientific subjects with my Aunt Suffern: at this distance she is entertaining, but in a tête à tête ‘no, a thousand times no’.

By the way, I have never seen anything but the proofs of those photos of us both, and I should be glad if you would send me the best. Which reminds me, what was the final verdict on your portrait? Is it still a sojourner in the drawing room? But we must settle all these things when I come home.

It is a great pity that you are laid up: there would be points about London for us two–I should like to go with you to the Abbey and the Temple and a few other places. (Just as I am making Arthur green with envy by my accounts of Charing Cross Road, ‘a mile of bookshops’.) On Sunday I am going down to Bookham to see the sage: if only you could make the same pilgrimage! I must go and be massaged now, take care of yourself.

your loving son,

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

[Endsleigh Palace Hospital,

London]

Monday [17 June 1918]

My dear Galahad,

Now will I make you envious. On Friday night I went to Drury Lane to hear ‘The Valkyrie’.⁴⁰ The dream of years has been realised, and without disillusionment: I have had thrills and delights of the real old sort, I have felt as I felt five years ago.

We had difficulty in getting seats, and from those which we had we could only see one side of the stage. I was also much worried by the people that sat near us. Not that they were philistines and talked, but their very enthusiasm made them a nuisance. One little man in front of me was so moved that at several interesting points he stood up, until at last I became so exasperated that I caught him by his coat tails and pulled him into his seat. Another, who was following the score, kept on giving vent to quite audible criticisms such as ‘Louder, Louder!’ or ‘No, no, no’ whenever the conductor’s design differed from his own.

But the performance was beyond all words. The first act as you remember is in Hunding’s hut with the tree growing in it: and towards the end you remember how Siegmund draws the sword and how they throw open the great doors at the back. This showed us a most beautiful scene of distant snow covered peaks and a wild valley. The lighting gave a really unusual impression of spring moon light, and that combined with the glorious love-music of the orchestra (you remember the spring song?) simply swept you away–and then all the time creeping in under this the faint horn blown motive of the sword and the far-off tinkling hammers to remind you of the Niblungs–oh, ami, it was simply heaven! But the next act which opens in ‘A wild rocky place’–represented not conventionally but with real sympathy–and Brünhilde singing ‘Moi-aa-hei’ (you know) was even better. She, it is true, was a trifle full-breasted and operatic, but as the interest of the scene went on, one forgot that. Wotan was magnificent whenever he came on, and all his music is splendid–there are whole hours of music just as wonderful as the little bits we know: the singing was in English, and so clear and un-strained that with my knowledge of the story, I could follow nearly all the dialogue, and so all the poetic and romantic pleasure came to help the musical. As a spectacle the third act was the best, where Brünhilde is hiding from Wotan. The stage is almost dark, lit only from time to time by flashes of lightening, as the angry god draws nearer and nearer and at last enters in a glare of red light, glinting on the huge raven-wings of his helmet and the rings of his mail–one gleaming figure in that sinister gloom–and the music, I cannot describe it. Most unfortunately it was so late that I had to come away before the end, and miss the fire music: but I was so full of delights that I could hardly find it in my heart to grumble.

Looking back, what pleases me most was the training of all the singers together and the entire absence of strain: none of your Italian screaming and contortions. There was no famous name in the caste, and no-one except Brünhilde had a voice of any unusual power: but the beauty was that they never tried to sing louder than they could, and were content to sacrifice power to real beauty–playing into each other’s hands and making it all musical dialogue NOT mere duets. You felt that they all loved the Ring and took it seriously not merely as an opportunity for noise. Sieglindë particularly, with a sweet voice and clear enunciation, acted very well, quietly & naturally not in the usual operatic style. And oh! the blessèd absence of a chorus! So you have my verdict that if the Ring is all like this it quite comes up to our old dreams, and that all Italian opera is merely a passtime compared with the great music-drama of Wagner. In spite of all our efforts we could not get a programme and so I cannot send you one.

To descend from the windswept eerie’s of the swan-maidens to a further argument about the Dry Tree may seem bathos: but as you have agreed to go on with it, let us do so. The subject is of great interest too.

Of course we all start with the idea that our senses put us in direct contact with reality–you think that your eyes are windows by which your brain ‘sees’ the world. But science teaches you that your eye, or rather the nerve of your eye, is merely a telegraph wire. It’s vibration produces a feeling in your brain which we call colour etc.: but what the Something at the other end which starts the vibration may be, of this no human being can have any conception. No increase of our sensory keenness, no microscope or teloscope can put us in any direct relation with the Thing: we still remain dependant on this long chain of communications, travelling by vibration from atom to atom: and we can never have any proof that the sensation which it produces in our brain conveys any true idea of the external Thing. Nay the thing must be quite different from our conception of it: for we necessarily concieve it in terms of the senses–we think of any object as having a certain size, shape, colour and feel. But all these are only the names of our own sensations: take size, which may seem at first to be outside ourselves. On the table lies my pipe: if I wish to have an idea of the size of this I naturally handle it: in other words I send out a will from my brain (which I call ‘moving my hand’) and presently a set of impressions come back to me–smoothness, hardness, width and the rest. It is true that at the same time as these come along my touch-nerves another set of brown-ness, shininess, rotundity etc come along my visual-nerves. And if I repeat the action ten times I find that the same set of sight-impressions always accompanies the same set of touch-ones: in other words what looks a pipe, always feels a pipe too. But this brings me no nearer to the real pipe: I can only think of it as long, brown, smooth, hard and rounded: therefore think of it wrongly, since length, smoothness, brown-ness, hardness and rotundity are feelings in my brain, and cannot belong to the real pipe at all. (Shape, which was bothering you, is of course on the same footing as colour or hardness: it can only be apprehended thro’ the same chain of communication, by the senses of touch or sight, and therefore is in me not in the external Thing). Hence you see we are driven to the conclusion that we have no knowledge of the external world: that it is concievable that there IS no external world at all, and that if it does exist it must be quite different from our usual ideas of it. A good many modern scientists think that ‘matter’ consists of atoms which are not (as we used to think) small solid bodies but merely points of force and that all the phenomena of matter can be attributed to the inter-action of these forces. If you are still interested in these subjects I will talk in another letter about the various conclusions which philosophers have drawn from this ignorance which we are forced to acknowledge, and the ways by which they have tried to escape from it.

I have sent you two books from Hatchards’ of Picadilly: whether you have them already or would care to have them, I can’t say, but you will have no difficulty in changing them. I finished my last letter in rather a hurry, and can’t remember whether I referred to your drawing in them: I am glad you are going on with it. The absence of models, as far as hands, limbs, folds of clothes, etc go could be helped by the looking-glass, which I imagine is an excellent teacher. How fine it will be when you can get me up in your room again and show me all your new work and all your new treasures. I too shall have plenty for you to see: I have sent home a fine edition of Yeats which I have been wanting for ages, and have bought here Dent’s Malory with designs by Beardesly. It is a beautiful book, with a handsome binding, good paper and a fair page: there are lovely chapter headings and decorations, and somehow a great big book suits Malory, doesn’t it? In that same shop, Bain’s, where I got this they showed me some of Morris’s Kelmscott Press books, including the Chaucer, very rare and now at £82. I suppose it is bad taste on my part, but I don’t care for Morris’s type, it is much too ornate and difficult to read. Ordinary old black-letter I should much prefer.

By the way, <if you have alone established ‘Uranianism’ in your own mind as something virtuous and natural, I must remind you that for men in ordinary sexual arrangements, a promiscuous desire for every beautiful person you meet is usually disapproved of. Your talk about continually meeting people and having to conceal your feelings suggests that you have no intention of confining yourself to one love: but perhaps I have misunderstood you.>

On Sunday we were down at Bookham and I called at Gastons. You can imagine how strange it was to go back now among those old scenes and people.

I think I have talked enough now. Addio, write by return.

Yours

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 329–31):

[Endsleigh Palace Hospital,

London

20? June 1918]

My dear Papy,

On Sunday I made my pilgrimage. Even to go to Waterloo was an adventure full of memories, and every station that I passed on the way down seemed to clear away another layer of the time that passed and bring me back to the old life.

Bookham was as its best: a mass of green, very pleasing to one ‘that has been long in city pent’.⁴¹ As I walked up to Gastons the familiar road was crowded with good people coming back from church, and I passed many a stuffy old couple whom I remembered well, though none of them recognised me. It was like being a ghost: I opened the gate of Kirk’s garden almost with stealth and went on past the house, to the vegetable garden and the little wild orchard with the pond, where I had sat so often on hot Sunday afternoons, and practised skating with Terry when the long frost began two years ago.

And there among the cabbages, in his shirt and ‘Sunday’ trousers, there sure enough was the old man, still digging and smoking his villainous pipe. His back was towards me and I had come within a few paces of him before he turned and saw me. And so I was led into the house with much triumph and displayed to Mrs K., whom we found fussing with the maid just as of old. I have seldom spent a more delightful afternoon: what ‘crack’ we had, what reminiscences, how often my opinions were shown to be based (‘bazed’ as the sage pronounces it) on an insufficient knowledge of the subject! When I told him that it was by an English shell I was hit, it called forth a magnificent Tirade on the ‘simple mathematical problem’ of calculating how a gun’s range would shorten as it got heated by firing–on the ‘every school boy knows’ lines.

I have bought an edition of Yeats⁴² which I ordered the bookseller to send home and which should have arrived by this time. Of course I need not add that you are welcome to open the parcel, if you would care to. Arthur at any rate would like to see it, and if you replace the books in their boxes they will be safe from dust and damp until I come home. I hope you do not think it extravagant in me to have bought such a thing, for I knew it was a limited edition which would be very much dearer in a few years’ time. In the same shop where I made this purchase, I’m afraid I gave myself away badly. What first tempted me to go in was a battered copy of Burton’s Anatomy: as you know, I had been looking for this and thought here was an opportunity of picking up a cheap second hand copy. I went in and requested a courtly old gentleman to let me see it. ‘H’m’, said I, glancing over the dirty little volume, ‘it seems rather worn: haven’t you a newer copy?’ The gentleman looked at me in rather a pained way and said that he had not. ‘Well, how much is it?’ I asked, expecting a considerable reduction. ‘Twenty-five guineas’ said my friend with a bland smile. Ye Gods! Just think of it: there was I for the first time in my life fingering a really valuable old edition and asking for a ‘NEWER’ copy. I turned hot all over: and even you as you read, will blush for the credit of the clan. However, the old gentleman was very forgiving: he turned his treasury inside out for me. He showed me priceless old copies of Vergil and Rabelais, books from the Kelmscott Press, including the Chaucer at £82 and strange forgotten waifs of French literature with stiff engravings ‘from the age of snuff boxes and fans’. And so what could I do but bring away the Yeats? Apropos of Beardsley, he told me that the ‘fleshly’ artist had often been in that shop and had finally gone the way of all mortal things without paying his account. Well, ‘et ego in Arcadia Vixi,’⁴³ it is something to have been in the shop of James Bain even for an hour.

It seems that now-a-days one is sent from hospital to be kept for some time in a ‘convalescent home’ before going on leave. Of course I have asked to be sent to an Irish one, but there are only a few of these and they are already crowded: we must not therefore expect too much. But wherever I am I know that you will come and see me. You know I have some difficulty in talking of the greatest things: it is the fault of our generation and of the English schools. But at least you will believe that I was never before so eager to cling to every bit of our old home life and to see you. I know I have often been far from what I should in my relations to you, and have undervalued an affection and a generosity which (as I said somewhere else) an experience of ‘other people’s parents’ has shown me in a new light. But, please God, I shall do better in the future. Come and see me. I am homesick, that is the long and the short of it.

I have been once or twice to the English Opera at Drury Lane and seen among other things my long desired ‘Valkyrie’ and Faust again–full of reminiscences of course. This week Mrs. Moore has been up on a visit to her sister who works at the War Office, and we have seen a good deal of each other. I think it some comfort to her to be with someone who was a friend of Paddy’s and is a link with the Oxford days: she has certainly been a very, very good friend to me.

I was much cheered this afternoon by a visit from Kelsie [Ewart]: who is in excellent spirits but looked to me very poorly–perhaps it is my imagination. I will wire to you as soon as there is any talk of my being moved. Do not count on Ireland: but at all events, come. The wound on my leg is still bothering me a bit, although it was the smallest I had. The bandage–just above the knee–is always slipping, and descended to my ankle the other day in the middle of Piccadilly, necessitating urgent calls for a taxi.

Good night: nurse the old chest and write soon and long,

your loving son

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP VI: 17–18):

[Ashton Court,

Long Ashton,

Clifton, Bristol

29 June 1918]⁴⁴

Saturday.

My dear Papy,

Surely this is the most unfortunate thing that ever happened to us! I was prepared to be disappointed in my efforts to be sent to an Irish convalescent home, but this is the very acme of ill luck. When they finally told me in London that I could not go to Ireland, they asked me to choose some part of England: at first I said London, thinking that this would be more convenient for you than any provincial town, but this could not be done. I then elected Bristol, where I could have the society of Mrs Moore, and also of Perrett of the Somersets, whose being wounded some days before myself I mentioned to you. Little could I foresee what was going to happen: we are still close prisoners, and have had several tests of blood and excreta taken–the one painful, the other disgusting.

All the ‘gilded youth’ among the patients, who have no interests in themselves, of course grow more troublesome being confined. The place echoes to the crack of their billiard balls and their loud, tuneless whistling: I was very miserable for the first few days until I discovered a little, almost disused writing room at one end of the house. Here I can sit in comparative safety and read Burton’s anatomy⁴⁵ which I have had sent from town.

If I should happen to get the disease I suppose all my bits of things will be burned. I could sit down and cry over the whole business: and yet of course we have both much to be thankful for. When a man can sleep between sheets as long as he will, sit in arm chairs, and have no fears, it is peevish to complain. If I had not been wounded when I was, I should have gone through a terrible time. Nearly all my friends in the Battalion are gone. Did I ever mention Johnson who was a scholar of Queens? I had hoped to meet him at Oxford some day, and renew the endless talks that we had out there. ‘Dis aliter visum’,⁴⁶ he is dead. I had had him so often in my thoughts, had so often hit on some new point in one of our arguments, and made a note of things in my reading to tell him when we met again, that I can hardly believe he is dead. Don’t you find it particularly hard to realise the death of people whose strong personality makes them particularly alive: with the ordinary sons of Belial who eat and drink and are merry, it is not so hard.

But I must not enlarge on a melancholy subject: I have no doubt that we are all three of us pretty low. However, ‘better luck next time’: this cannot last for ever and I hope yet to have a visit from you. As for my own health it is pretty good, although the wound in the leg–the smallest of the three–is still giving some trouble. The house here is the survival, tho’ altered by continual rebuilding, of a thirteenth-century castle: the greater part is now stucco work of the worst Victorian period (à la Norwood Towers) but we have one or two fine old paintings and a ghost. I haven’t met it yet and have not much hope to–indeed if poor Johnson’s ghost would come walking into the lonely writing room this minute, I should be glad enough. Greatly to my chagrin the library is locked up. The park is several miles in extent, very pleasant and stocked with deer: once or twice while wandering in the bracken I have suddenly come upon the solemn face and branching antlers of a stag, within a few feet of me. He examines me for a moment, then snorts, kicks up his heels, and is gone: a second later, head after head comes up–his panic has reached the rest of the herd, and they too scamper off after him like the wind.

A most generous and welcome consignment of smokeables came this morning. Communication with the town is scanty now of course, and this is a most welcome addition to our diminishing stocks: what is more, such little attentions are infinitely cheering when one is dull, lonely and disappointed. With many thanks and best love, I am

your loving

son Jack

 

P.S. Please let Arthur know my change of address and tell him that I will write soon. yours, J.