1920

TO LEO BAKER¹ (B):

Little Lea,

Strandtown,

Belfast.

12th Jan. 1920.

My dear Baker,

The fact of being at home, which to me is a synonym for busy triviality, continual interruption and a complete lack of privacy, must be my best excuse for not having written to you before. I should have thanked you, too, long ago for the card which you sent me with my MSS. The poem, seen for the first time in print, was excellent: the first line carries you away into a strange country, a grave childlike kind of Christmas-land, homely yet strangely interesting and even awe-inspiring. I find, however, on reading the poem over, plenty of melody but not enough harmony: it does not leave a continuous music in the ear.

This is intolerable, you know, about your health: I had never reckoned on such a sublunary consideration breaking up our salon. Doubtless you have already decided what to do, so any advice on my part comes–happily–too late. ‘Safety first’ as the posters say, must of course be your motto and no one would advise you to risk your permanent health for even the delights of Pasley’s society and mine: but, unless my wishes deceive me, I should think that interest and occupation at Oxford would be better for you than remaining in town with or without a job. I am afraid everything will be broken up if you are staying next term. You are rather a key-stone, you know.² Pasley will tend gradually toward modernism, I to mediaevalism; Hartman will go on being brilliant, but there will be no cohesion. I was hoping to have many more conversations with you on the subjects which we have in common, and perhaps become your amateur disciple in mysticism. However–do try and come up.

About Munro’s refusal and the new step, if any, to be taken, we can hardly talk without meeting.³ I feel, as a matter of conscience that we should try to get the thing published, though I do not feel any great joy at the prospect.⁴ Everything hinges on our view of Munro’s opinion. If he is right we must make him wrong, yours very truly

Clive Lewis

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

[University College]

Teusday [3? February 1920]

My dear Arthur,

I shall expect to hear from you soon that your plans are settled: I suppose it is useless to hope that you have still any intention of going to Harrogate, though you may tell your advisers, for their comfort, that it is absolutely warm and springlike in England.

You will be surprised when you hear how I employed the return journey–by reading an H. G. Wells novel called ‘Marriage’,⁵ and perhaps more surprised when I say that I thoroughly enjoyed it; one thing you can say for the man is that he really is interested in all the big, outside questions–and the characters are intensely real, especially a Mr Pope who reminds me of Excellenz. It opens new landscapes to me–how one felt that on finding that a new kind of book was waiting for one, in the old days–and I have decided to read some more of his serious books. It is funny that I–and perhaps you–read the old books for pleasure and always turn to contemporaries with the notion of ‘improving my mind’. With most, I fancy, the direct opposite is so.

But I must work like ten devils this term and bid good-bye to general reading except for an odd hour on Sundays. I read the Bacchae⁶ over yesterday–for the last time before the exam: to rush through great poetry at top speed is not, of course, the right way to appreciate it, but one gets a peculiar value out of such a flying survey now and then. I realized, for one thing, how very quickly the terrible story happens: in the morning the old men with the magic youth in them are going out to the mountains, and before evening you have the stupid anger of Pentheus, the capture of the God and his quiet, ominous words to his captor, his escape, the swift madness of Pentheus, the catastrophe, and then it is all over and the long years of misery follow the one fatal mistake when mortal wisdom met immortal passion. You did like it didn’t you?

I was in Baker’s rooms with Pasley last night: Pasley departed early and the conversation between us two fell on shadowy subjects–ghosts and spirits and Gods. You may or may not disbelieve what followed. Baker began to tell me about himself: how he had seen things ever since he was a child, and had played about with hypnotism and automatic writing: how he had finally given it all up, till now ‘things’ were coming back of their own accord. ‘At one time’ he said ‘I was afraid to look round the room for fear of what I might see.’ He also stated confidently that anyone could compel a ghost to appear, that there were definite ways of doing it: though of course the thing you ‘fished up’ might not be what you wanted–indeed quite the contrary. The greater part of his views I will reserve for our next meeting: what I wanted to tell you was the effect on me. I got, as it were, dazed and drunk in all he said: then I noticed his eyes: presently I could hardly see anything else: and everything he said was real–incredibly real. When I came away, I moved my eyes off his, with a jerk, so to speak, and suddenly found that I had a splitting headache and was tired and nervous and pulled to pieces. I fancy I was a bit hypnotised. At any rate I had such a fit of superstitious terror as I have never known since childhood and have consequently conceived, for the present, a violent distaste for mysteries and all that kind of business. Perhaps he is a bit mad.

The Minto was so pleased with your bag and so was Maureen with her box which I think is quite charming. I have decided to come out and ‘dig’ at Headington altogether next term.⁷ Hope you’re alright.

Yours

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP VI: 179):

University College

Sunday.

Postmark: 4 February 1920

My dear Papy,

Many thanks for your letter and also for the instructions to Aunt Suffern. I don’t in the least want to consume large quantities of oranges or anything else, but if it must be, I suppose she will rest content with such an arrangement. I only hope she will not waste too much of our substance in riotous living.

The parcel you were asked to register contained my old trench coat which I thought might be better than a big coat for wet but warm days. I had left it with her of Endor and given instructions that it should be sent on and that ‘the captain would register and address it’. However it has now arrived safely, and as there have been no ‘wet, warm days’ the delay has done no harm.

I am preparing to wait upon my great aunt Warren⁸ this afternoon, with transports as moderate as those of the Colonel. I think this particular form of introducing strangers by letter, on the theory that blood is thicker than water (‘and a good deal nastier’ as someone added) is one of the most irritating of social amenities. It always reminds me of two hostile children being shoved into a room and told to ‘have a nice game’ together.

I hope you will like Mexico:⁹ most interesting characters those old ‘conquistadors’ with their strange mixture of avarice, religion, and brutality. I am inclined to agree with you–and Mrs Ward–about the lack of charm in Wells: but there are other qualities as important, if less delightful. I am now reading ‘Lavengro’ at breakfast every morning and should like it very much if one could cut out the anti-Catholic propaganda.

We are still having wonderful weather here and I hope to get in a good walk today. The new suits have arrived and are most satisfactory.

your loving son,

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

[University College]

Saturday [14? February 1920]

My dear Arthur,

I was very glad to see from your letter that you have at last escaped from Ireland. New scenery, pleasant society, books to read and an empty hotel to read them in–what could be nicer? I hope you have got over your usual ‘unsettlement’ at leaving home: certainly it is good that you have left: it is not the disadvantages of home but its comforts that kill–lazy comfort gets hold on one like spiders-web, doesn’t it? I hope you told Mrs P.¹⁰ that it was ‘lack of time’ decided me to give up ‘Odds & Ends’, not that I thought it pretty bad? You are so tactful you know!

You will be glad to hear that I have started Lavengro again (at breakfast) and though I still dislike the anti-Catholic propaganda and the rhetorical passages where the inspiration failed him and he filled up with the usual style of the period, I feel the charm as I did not feel it before and find the book hard to put down. I think with authors as with people we meet, when one finds an objectional feature the best thing is to trace it back to some central point of character from which it originates. When a thing is explained it loses half its nastiness, ‘tout comprende c’est tout pardonner’.¹¹ I have therefore found an explanation which might account for Borrow’s rampant protestantism–it lies in the extreme Northernness or Saxon-ism of his nature. He thrilled, as we once did, to everything Norse, even the skull of Dane. I am glad to see that he knew the Kalevala. Hence, of course, a thoroughly Southern, Latin & Mediterranean thing like the Church was antipathetic and he worked up reasonable explanations to support the feeling which was really independent of them. I think the descriptions of the walk thro’ the snow and the fairy-smith are admirable.

Did you see the Times Review of a new poem ‘Mansoul’ by Charles Doughty?¹² Doughty is an old poet and traveller whom I have heard mentioned now & then by the ‘people who really know’, always with a profound if distant respect. The review persuaded me to buy Mansoul, which is the strangest thing to be written in 1920–an epic poem in 6 books, of which I have read two and a half so far. Now, mark, for this is important if I’m right–I think it was one of the really great things that will stand out like Dante or Milton, and, if so, isn’t it wonderful to be alive when it has come out. It is very, very difficult, being written in a curious grammar which leaves out nearly all the pronouns: this is wicked, but even through it you can see the signs of a great work. It is a sort of journey into the underworld, where various ancient sages are interviewed on the meaning of life: we have a glimpse of hell, too, and some fine well-at-the-worlds-end kind of scenery in the first book: later on, I see, there are very learned & very English fairy passages. On the whole its more like Spenser than Milton.

Damn Tchaine’s impudence for thinking I am to be a critic: the only thing in the world I could criticize really well is her wonderful self.

It is frosty here again, and there has been beautiful twilight to-day with the cold red light behind the black trees. All of us and chiefly the Minto find this place¹³ more and more intolerable as time goes on: but all our hopes of a change seem to become will o’ the wisps (do you remember that song–at Portsalon–ye gods!!) when we are hottest on the trail.

I have decided to send you some spelling-notes every time I write until you improve. To day I suggest ‘digging’ and ‘asthma’ as preferable to ‘diging’ and ‘asma’.

Yours

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

22 Old Cleeve

Washford,

Somerset.

[2 April 1920]

My dear Arthur,

I don’t know what you must think of me by now. Sometimes I try to console myself by saying that you would have written again yourself unless you had been sufficiently occupied in the interval. All the same I know the fault is mine–but hear my tale.

First of all came some weeks of hard work before the exam. Then the exam¹⁴, itself for eight days, on the first day of which this swollen gland in my throat appeared again, much larger this time and more painful. I had a night with practically no sleep and could hardly eat anything–I think sanatogen saved me in the end. After the exam, I had a few cheery days packing up all my books etc (heart-breaking task!) preparatory to living at Headington next term. Then when I got out there, relations with our landlady had become so intolerable–the Minto will describe it to you some day–that we had to leave at once–and as the place we are going next term was not ready we had no other alternative but to decamp and leave our effects with various friends. More days of packing, pulling & hawling cases, arranging and re-arranging in boiling weather. We had seen an advertisement of a cottage here for a month and taken it on chance, so desperate were we. Thus finally, after the most loathsome and degrading scenes with our landlady and landlord, who nearly became violent, we departed–all of us pretty nearly done. The Minto and I still dream of the Jeffreys. I shall never get the taste of that woman out of my mind–‘not uglier follow the night-hag’.¹⁵ But now that we are here, to quote Milton again, ‘This turn hath made amends.’¹⁶

You do not, of course, know where old Cleeve is: nor did I till a week ago. It is not far from the end of the world: from a delightful thatched cottage with big low rooms and modern arrangements we look out on a sea of fruit trees. The village is so small as hardly to deserve the name: and all round there is not a single straight line in the landscape. From the sea which is about a mile to our right to the black mountains on our left the hills are piled together like eggs in a basket, with the most charming villages nestling between them and orchards and streams everywhere and primroses as thick as the lights from the town at home on every bank. Across the water is the hazy outline of Wales–the Arthurian country round Kaerleon and the Usk, I believe. Those same ‘Black Hills’ on the extreme left of our landscape I have been trying to reach for some time and succeeded this morning (Good Friday). They are rather of the same type as Divis¹⁷–very black and grim. On one side I looked down into our own homely and rolling valley, on the other to more and more hills with deep gorges between where fir woods sometimes straggled up the sides. Then I went half way down a deep fold in the hill where a stream ran under queer gray trees and there were rocks to sit on, for the bracken and heather were wet. There I rested in an enormous silence and gradually the old feeling came into my mind. You know what I mean–a feeling associated with Wagner and the Well at the Worlds End, which I haven’t had for over a year now. I wish I had my copy of The Lore of Proserpine here–it is just the place to read it in.

You can’t imagine what a relief it is to be down here, away from work and exams and rows and packing and luggage! I am writing a good deal and also reading. Before we left Oxford I read Romola.¹⁸ Certainly there is great comfort in these old-fashioned historical novels with a slow but not languid movement and plenty of work in them. I have forgotten whether you have read it or not. Since then followed Washington Irving’s Life of Mahomet,¹⁹ a silly and scanty book on an interesting subject and Lowes Dickinson’s ‘The Meaning of Good’.²⁰ You should read the latter if you get hold of it–it introduces you to a good many points of view in philosophy without being at all technical or pedantic. I am now at ‘Waverley’²¹ which I like very much so far and ‘Prometheus Unbound’.

I am writing to my father on Monday to tell him that I shall not be home this Vac.–I really can’t face him on top of everything else–but you had better pose as having heard nothing about me or my movements if you should be compelled to meet him.

The Minto has a nasty cold but I think the place is doing her good–she sends her love and hopes that your stay in England has done you good. And now, don’t be fed up with me for my long silence: write and tell me how your world goes on–I only hope you are having as good a time as I at present have without the purgatory through which I passed to reach it.

Yours

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP VI: 183):

22 Old Cleeve,

Washford,

Somerset

4 April 1920

My dear Papy,

I am glad to be able to begin with a bit of good news. I did get a first after all. Unfortunately that is almost all I can tell you, as the names in each class are given only in alphabetical order and I can see no possibility of finding out places or marks. Now as to our movements: as this is the shortest vac., and also as I felt in need of some ‘refresher’ I thought it a good opportunity of paying off an engagement with a man who has been asking me for some time to go and ‘walk’ with him.²² We are at present at this tiny little village in a perfectly ideal cottage (which is, so to speak, his people’s Teigh-na-mara) from which base we shall set out when the weather clears.

We are quite alone and live an idyllic life on eggs, bully beef and–divine treasure–an excellent ham which Aunt Lily very opportunely sent. The country is delightful, consisting of high moors with charming valleys full of orchards between them, and everything is a mass of white blossom. It is on the borders of Somerset and Devon. Our address will of course be moveable but letters sent here will reach me after some delay. I am sorry to desert you for the present, but it had to be polished off sooner or later.

I am just getting over a rather tiresome cough and cold and am beginning to feel much better than I have done for a long time. I have brought Waverley to clean out my mind–there is great comfort in these solid old books.

I have celebrated the occasion by sending a poem to the Hibbert Journal, but I very much doubt if they will accept anything by so unknown a person as myself. At any rate they will probably take about a month to deliberate.

Thank you very much for both the cheques. I hope the teeth are now giving no trouble and also that the official shooting season has not set in yet at Belfast. Does the last murder mean that the Orange people are replying?

your loving

son Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

22 Old Cleeve,

Washford,

Somerset.

Sunday [11 April 1920]

My dear Arthur,

Your letter gave me great pleasure both because it was the first after a long pause (for which I was responsible) and also because it had a cheerfulness and resolution which have long been strangers to you. If the mind really reflects the body you must be enormously better. Is it possible that the good days are at last dawning again? I can’t say how pleased I should be to see you strong and able to do things and doing them: above all don’t get a relapse either mental or physical, and incidentally excuse what may sound a patronising tone and put it down to the best motives. As we cannot have that ‘long talk’ you mention, we must try to discuss things as well as possible on paper.

One thing I should take as data–whatever you do, let it be something that will take you from Belfast. Absence cured you: nothing, I fancy, is more likely to un-cure you than a long period at Bernagh. I can’t put into words the effect which surroundings familiar even to staleness and the sort of heavy impetus of all that has passed are likely to have. And Ireland itself–much as I love and ‘desire it all my days’ as Homer says, if other things were equal–I think there is some truth in my own ‘Irish Nocturne’.²³ Look it up, not as a poem but as a theory and tell me if you agree.

It would please me beyond everything if you could realize your plan of coming to Oxford. Though of course I could not see you so often nor so regularly as at home we should be constantly meeting, and once you get ‘settled’–which you would in time–I think the life would be splendid for you. You would find an enormous choice of congenial friends, and you can have no idea how the constant friction with other and different minds improves one. You would have none of the reasons (either of circumstance or temperament) which make my circle small and would, I hope, soon ‘know everybody’. The difficulty is to find an ostensible pretext for Oxford. What the exact conditions of entering are since Greek has been withdrawn I do not know: but perhaps merely to be here, not as an undergraduate would leave you freer to develop on your own lines–though of course a degree is useful in itself and gives you, as you say, some object in life. You might come up to study some particular period of history–not as an undergraduate–and to use the old documents etc in the Bodleian: always provided you can trust yourself to be busy and happy without a definite task and exams. Your father could easily afford it: would he approve. Of course you can frankly use my presence as a reason for wanting to be here!

Except for my own pleasure the Slade²⁴ is undoubtedly the best plan, and I suppose it is that you really have in view. I don’t see on what principle the doctor could veto it and yet allow any of the other plans.

I suppose you are not really serious about the poultry farming? The Minto has plenty of experience in that line and says that IF you could get the ground and house at Headington you could run a partnership with her and she would undertake to make it pay! You know best whether you could really be happy in what is called an outdoor life.

In fact if the doctor forbids the Slade, I suppose it comes down to pursuing something definite in private–but I hope NOT at home. I do most strongly fear the effects of another dull, empty winter at Bernagh. I know you don’t like to apply to your father again very soon but if nothing else turns up you should make an effort at all costs to be away, here or anywhere, for as long as possible. You wouldn’t care to turn your attention to philosophy–seriously, I mean, not just as ordinary reading? I am just starting it soon for my next exam. and we could keep each other up by letter.

I didn’t at all agree with you about the difficulty of ‘getting into’ Waverley. I personally would not have a sentence of those early chapters curtailed: they showed me Scott in quite a new light, describing the childhood and development of the hero in his world of imagination. I can’t help feeling that when he wrote this Scott had a higher sense of responsibility to his own characters–took them more seriously and worked out their natural growth more thoroughly–than in his later novels. Isn’t the scene at the end where Waverley finds the old Baron of Bradwardine by the guidance of the idiot David Gellatley simply typical Scott–and delightful.

I saw a scene the other day that was typical Scott too–the Castle of Dunster. It stands on a little wooded hill just at the mouth of a long valley with very steep sides half-covered by fir-woods and just from its gates downwards straggles the single broad street of a drowsy village²⁵ with an old fountain: and the upper storeys of the cottages project in Elizabethan style. But it can only be described in language of Scott’s period.

I am glad you saw ‘Dear Brutus’.²⁶ ‘Don’t go into the wood!’–how well that first act works up to the supernatural of the second. I hope the ‘Dream-child’²⁷ was good–everything depends on her. And that reminds me, the best news of all in your letter was that you are writing again. I won’t repeat all my old wishes on the subject: but I still think it most unlikely that all the romance and imagination which are in you should evaporate in nothing more than appreciation of other people’s work. Of course the thing’s always difficult for a man who begins after his own critical faculties are fully grown. A child, if easily discouraged, is also easily satisfied and his powers grow with his ideals. But I hope you will make up your mind to go through with a good deal of trouble.

Look at me–I am still working at my poem on Merlin and Nimue. It has been in succession–rhymed monologue–rhymed dialogue–blank verse dialogue–long narrative in stanzas–short narrative in couplets–and I am at present at work on a blank verse narrative version. I hope I am not wasting my time: but there must be some good in a subject which drags me back to itself so often. You see, as Chaucer says,

We toilen ever and poren in the fire
And for all that we fail in our desire.²⁸

Since finishing Waverley I have started Heroes and Hero-Worship²⁹ and finished the first lecture, which I read long, long ago when I first knew you, in the days when everything to do with the Norse lore was honey to me. Even now, when I have found so much better, I can’t help regretting the extraordinary keenness and singleness of wish that one had then.

Write soon and I will really try to keep up a regular interchange in the ‘good, old’ style. I hope that you will go on as you now are: remember how others have kept themselves full of hope and life in worse predicaments–and excuse my ever preaching.

Yours

Jack

 

P.S. I never got the last letter you mention. If you can please say when it was sent, for we are afraid those damned Jeffreys are keeping our letters. Love from all.

TO HIS FATHER (LP VI: 184–5):

22 Old Cleeve,

Washford,

Somerset.

April 11th 1920

My dear Papy,

I was very sorry to hear that I had allowed you first to learn the news about Mods. from a stranger. I had put off writing until I was clear of Oxford and half thought that you might see it in the Times³⁰ as soon as you could have heard it from me. As a matter of fact the Oxford news is so hid in a corner of the paper that it quite naturally escaped you.

I had quite forgotten about Aunt Warren. She must be pretty old, and dresses (with cap and white collar) in a style which makes her look rather more so. At the same time there is nothing senile in her conversation or manner. We talked chiefly about Glenmachan and Irish politics. The only one of ‘the girls’ present was Daisy, who is, I suppose, over forty. She struck me as being ecclesiastical in a high degree: for instance from her point of view the chief argument in favour of expelling the Turks from Europe was ‘that it would re-establish the Patriarch at Constantinople and thus create a balance to the Papacy’. After the Armenian massacres, not to mention the war, that would hardly have appeared to me–nor to you I presume–the most important reason. There was a very attractive child whose parents are in India: but I like the old lady the best of the three.

As you see, we have not yet moved: indeed the weather has not encouraged us to set out, though it has not prevented us from a great deal of walking. It is more beautiful here almost than any place I have ever seen–whether in the valleys full of orchards or up on the big heathery hills from which one looks down on the sea and the Welsh coast away on the horizon.

You need not have any fears about our cuisine here. Remember we are almost in Devon and the clotted cream of the country is a host in itself: also–shades of Oldie–the real ‘Deevonshire’ cider in every thatched and sanded pub.³¹

A few miles away is a little fishing town called Watchet, which saw at least one interesting scene in its obscure history: it was here that Coleridge and the Wordsworths slept (or ‘lay’ as they would have said) on the first night of their walking tour. During that afternoon the germ of the Ancient Mariner occurred in conversation and in the inn at Watchet the first lines were jotted down.

I should think Brighton is not yet so intolerable as it will become in summer. I fancy the Colonel–and perhaps all of us–stands a good chance of being back in France soon unless the situation clears. God bless the French! and a murrain on Lloyd George and his impudent note!

I am sorry to hear that you have been poorly again. Have you ever tried Sanatogen as a tonic? Someone recommended it to me when I had my gland and was feeling rather poorly. It certainly gave me sleep, though not an opiate, and I think bucked me up all round.

your loving son,

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP VI: 187–8):

University College,

Oxford.

May 1st 1920

My dear Papy,

I found your letter waiting for me when I came up, and in the business of seeing new tutors, starting new lines of work, lunching with the said new tutors etc., etc., this is almost the first opportunity I have had of answering you.

As to ‘finance’ I agree with what you say. I understand that the arrangement was for you to lodge £30 at the beginning of each term: and the reason why no dates were mentioned was that doubtless a person with a mind like mine (or ‘mentality’ as a really modern writer would say–I know you love the word!) never knows the dates of the terms unless he has a calendar by him. I think however that this is sufficiently definite: and if you would kindly send me that amount before the beginning of each term, and also do so now, we shall be alright. You will not mind my applying to you for some ‘extra’ expenses which may from time to time occur.

I have two tutors now that I am doing ‘Greats’, one for history³² and one for philosophy.³³ Of course I am sorry to have parted brass rags with old Poynton: the other two are much younger men, but seem quite nice. We go to the philosophy one in pairs: then one of us reads an essay and all three discuss it. I wish you could hear the ‘crack’, it is very amusing. Luckily I find that my previous dabbling in the subject stands me in good stead and for some time I shall have only to go over more carefully ground through which I have already meandered on my own.

I expect that what you feel about travel would be endorsed by a great many other people of your own age, who, as you say, have never really wanted a shilling in their lives. As far as I can see it is only the few who can do it without the least sacrifice who bother to see the world at all: the majority will not give up anything for it and would sooner afford a car to go round Stangford on, than see Greece or Cathay–if there really is a Cathay. One is amazed at the resolution of a real traveller like Herodotus, whom I am reading at present: knowing apparently no language but his own and relying on merchant caravans and dragomans with a smattering of Greek, he had yet penetrated to Babylon and seen the hanging gardens and the temple of Bel-Baal I suppose–and up the Nile as far as Elephantine where there were rumours of the land of dwarfs beyond–the Pygmies of course. Or Marco Polo–whom you should read: books of travel are a great resource.

I can’t understand the Irish news at all. One of the most curious things is the rapprochement which seems probable between English Trades Unionism and Sinn Fein. I was always confident that the religious differences, the ‘odium theologicum’ would prevent a junction between the two. If they really do work together I think it is all up for England and Ireland.

How are the teeth getting on?

your loving son,

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

[University College]

Monday [3? May 1920]

My dear Arthur,

Your last letter reached me the day after my return here and this is positively the first opportunity I have had of answering it. I must deal first of all with your definite questions. Ist As far as I can make out (for, indeed, the whole subject is still very uncertain) Greek will still be compulsory for Responsions in June but not for those in October and after. IInd I do not consider the choice of a college very important, much less so than that of a house at school. There are one or two you should avoid, as Christchurch and Magdalen for their expense, or Keble and Jesus for their vulgarity. Wadham is a very nice, quiet place and not too big. My great friend Baker is there and finds a great many pleasant people. There is no reason why Univ. should be ‘out of the question’, tho there is equally no reason why you should prefer it, especially now that I am living out. IIId I do not think that most colleges have entrance exams. in addition to Responsions. But on that and on the question of coming up before you take Responsions you had better write to the Bursar of the college you decide on and get definite information. It is much better to open such a correspondence than to rely on unofficial snippets like mine. I should say that you hoped to come up to So-and-So and ask I. for a syllabus of the Responsions subjects, II. whether you must take them before you come up–and any other questions that may occur to you. I do not think that anyone can fail in ‘Smalls’ after the removal of Greek, unless, like myself, he is incapable of elementary mathematics!³⁴I do not quite gather if your going to Oxford is still only a pis-aller for the Slade or whether you now mean to come in any case. I most sincerely hope you will, for I can imagine nothing that would do you more good. I feel rather nervous, lest, if it disappoint you, the responsibility may rest with me. It is a pity Caesar is such a dull book, but I suppose you’ll have to stick it. With care and going slowly at first you should easily pick up your Latin again. Perhaps indeed the historian in you may find interest where most of us cannot: of course it is mainly military history but if you once see it in perspective as an important step in the evolution of Europe you may not be too hopelessly bored.

How splendid to hear of you on the hills again: I can imagine what you felt in reaching at last that Mecca of ours after being exiled so long. There is much better scenery elsewhere no doubt, but as long as I live those little bits of wood and field will be an enchanted country to me. I think you touch on the great problem of writing when you put off describing your walk because the feeling of it is already past. If only the moment of inspiration cd. be identical with that of composition! As Chénier says ‘Le Coeur seul est poète’³⁵–only the heart, not the poor intellect trying to recapture it with his words and craft. Have you tried anything more in the writing line since? but I daresay your mind and your time are fully occupied in other ways.

We find our new quarters much more to our liking (so far) than we expected, though very expensive. ³⁶ It is a great relief to be living here and not trailing back in every night. Our landlady is a strange character–with a mystery about her: but that needs a whole letter if not an Algernon Blackwood story to describe.

Our Anthology ³⁷ (you know what I mean) goes to the publishers finally to-morrow and will be out for the Autumn sales. I am not just too satisfied with it, but Blackwell³⁸ seems to think it will pay its way and even leave a little profit with its five authors.

I am very sorry to find that my friend Baker is leaving at the end of this term: he is in every way the best person I have met in Oxford. I wonder what you will think of his poems. I say nothing of reading as I have been busy working and seeing people ever since I came up. The Minto sends her love and is like me delighted to hear of the revolution in your plans.

Just one more thing–if you really believe that painting is your job rather than a life of letters, don’t let this obscure that object. There is plenty of time for both, I suppose, but the real thing must always be the background of ones mind, mustn’t it? Hoping that nothing will occur to set you back in anyway–how conventional the words are, but I do most intensely mean them.

Yours

Jack

 

P.S. Your other letter has turned up.

TO HIS FATHER (LP VI: 188):

[University College,

Oxford]

Wednesday

Postmark: 25 May 1920

My dear Papy,

Please forgive my not having acknowledged your note sooner–I half expected a letter to follow. Many thanks for putting in the cheque. I have been in bed for some days with a mild form of this flu’ but am better now. The heat here is something terrible–we are almost a city of dreadful night.

your loving son,

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

[University College]

Sunday [6? June 1920]

My dear Arthur,

You certainly seem to be working with a vengeance now, and I daresay you find a great deal of effort necessary. I shouldn’t go too hard at the beginning: certainly I should not advise work on walks. I am a great believer in having your periods of rest, complete rest, however short they may be: ten minutes absolute ‘slack’ is far more useful than an hour of the half in between business.

The Latin Constructions did at one time seem rather a ‘slough’, I remember. The great thing is to pin them onto the nearest English equivalent constructions. Thus, for instance, if you have ‘He said I was a fool’, instead of thinking mechanically for the Accus. & Inf. rule, remember simply to say in English ‘He declared me to be a fool’

 

dixit

–then you get it at once declaravit } me stultum esse’.

 

Always make the verb of saying ‘declare’ in English. Similarly the Ablative Absolute has a parallel in the Irish idiom: as you might have ‘He kept on talking while I waited’ which in the language of Meehawl Mac-Murrahu would [be] ‘He kept on talking, so he did, and me waiting’–there you have it (leaving out the ‘and’ of course) ‘mê expectante’. I am afraid I don’t know the difference between a final and consecutive clause in English or Latin!–I always do what sounds right in either, but of course you can’t begin that way. ‘That I may get a copy’ would certainly be Pres. Subj. ‘ut librum procurem’. I shouldn’t kill myself trying to get ready for ‘Smalls’ by any particular time, though, of course, the sooner the better.

You will be interested to hear that I met your friend Robert Nicholls the other day. He is much less beautiful than the frontispiece to ‘Ardours & Endurances’ would lead you to suppose: as the particular grin which makes that big mouth tolerable in the photo cannot be kept up in conversation! He also sees fit to wear enormous goggle spectacles rimmed with thick, dark horn which covers most of his cheeks. He is a pleasant fellow, though rather overpowering and Tchanie-like (could a suitable match be arranged? I have no doubt the ‘ardours’ could be found on her side, but would the ‘endurances’ on his be forthcoming?) He went over the ‘Wild Hunt’ with me, suggesting several emendations, most of which I (and Baker) thought definitely bad–or rather he goes on a peculiar theory which may be good for him, but is not good for me.

Certainly the little trivial things such as shaving, cooking, eating and the like run away with a lot of time. I have had some days in bed with flu and been generally very lazy, reading ‘Kim’ ³⁹ and Trollope’s ‘Small House at Alington’. ⁴⁰ I am also, in the evening, reading Virgil through again: I do hope you will someday be able to read Latin with enjoyment–tho’ perhaps that seems to you at present a contradiction in terms.

I saw ‘Romance’ ⁴¹ in Oxford in 1917 before I went into the army (antequam militiam suscepi!) ⁴² and liked it pretty well, though there is really only one character in it–the woman. If she is good, parts of it are really very fine–and oh!, I forgot the other character, Tomaso, the monkey. I expect you will see in it the same people whom I saw (censeo te in illâ fabulâ visurum esse eosdem histriones quos ego!!)

I hope this last bout of hot weather has not set you back. You really shouldn’t grudge any time spent on walks: now that you feel better able to get about it must be delightful to visit the old haunts. By the bye, I hope you keep the weekends quite free from work: what can be better than to get out a book on Saturday afternoon and thrust all mundane considerations away till next week. You never get the same pleasure out of books as when you come back to them from these periodical exiles. I doubt if the amount of history you’d require for Smalls would really be much use to you afterwards: and I am quite sure that it would for the moment be more troublesome than the literature.

Wonderful to relate W. has been home and back again without giving us the honour of a visit. ⁴³ Miss Plowman was here the other night. The Minto sends her love and hopes to see you soon ‘flusht with victory’.

Yrs

Jack

 

P.S. ‘Realize’ not ‘reallize’. How is Gundred’s portrait getting on. How well you’ll look in a commoner’s gown!

TO HIS FATHER (LP VI: 189–90):

University College,

Oxford

6th June 1920

My dear Papy,

A better case could have been made out for your not writing: technically I might be the defendant, since your letter, of whatever length, was the last given or received. At any rate it’s a very nice point. I’m sorry to hear that you also have been ill: I hope it is not a return of the old trouble. Mine of course was nothing more than troublesome and now I am all right.

What exactly is Big Brother doing now? I presume that he hasn’t really started to keep a stud of two cars–I suppose one is being sold to get another: perhaps he too is getting sold over the deal. How we all get let down over the things on which we plume ourselves! Nothing will convince Warnie that he is not a great financier, while I continue in the face of all experience to imagine myself a ‘very parfait’⁴⁴ traveller. Thus Johnson considered that he was ‘a very polite man’.⁴⁵

I thought I had said something about the Anthology. It is being got up as a kind of counterblast to the ruling literary fashion here, which consists in the tendencies called ‘Vorticist’. Vorticist poems are usually in ‘vers libre’ (which means they are printed like verse, but neither rhyme nor scan, a line ending wherever you like). Some of them are clever, the majority merely affected, and a good few–especially among the French ones–indecent: not a sensuous indecency, but one meant to nauseate, the whole genus arising from the ‘sick of everything’ mood. So some of us others who are not yet sick of everything have decided to bring out a yearly collection of our own things in the hope of persuading the gilded youth that the possibilities of metrical poetry on sane subjects are not yet quite exhausted because the Vorticists are suffering from satiety. Of course we may end by proving just the opposite, but we must risk that: there will be a polemical preface and the first number is to appear in the autumn. We call it ‘The way’s the way’ ⁴⁶ which is a quotation from Bunyan (a writer of books you know)!

I have had to do some restocking of foot gear as the Somersetshire hills finished some old veterans. The bill for three ‘solings’ with rubbers (which add to the weight of the foot but keep you dry and make the leather last much longer) and one new pair is £3.18.0. It seems to me rather excessive, but my friends all tell me that it is low for the times. If you think this may fairly be counted an extra, would you please let me have the amount some time?

I don’t think even Arthur can fail to pass Responsions now that they have abolished Greek–unless indeed he stumbles, as I did, over elementary mathematics. He tell me you have been ‘very kind’ in ‘giving him advice’, which I gather means telling him how to write a letter. I remember once when he was here he had to write a card about getting a room in London: we were in committee about that for the best part of twenty four hours. However, judging by his recent letters, there is a great mental and physical improvement.

We have had a bus strike here. The President of the Liberal Club and the President of the Labour Club, with followers, very foolishly addressed the world at large from chairs the other evening: and a warm scene between mixed workers and undergraduates on each side was only interrupted by the appearance of the Proctors: whereupon the undergraduates fled from the Proctors and the Proctors, with less success, fled from the mob. This, you see, is true democracy.

your loving son,

Jack

 

P.S. I have had my board and am certified for a 20% disability: we shall hear in time what that means.

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

[University College]

Saturday [19 June 1920]

My dear Arthur,

The new syllabus for ‘Smalls’ certainly looks attractive. Quite putting aside the question of interest, I should advise you to take the literature. There is a lot of work in making up even a short period of history: but, for a person who has acquired the habit of reading, it should be really very easy to pass on the plays and the Milton and even on the Bacon. Of course you will have to read the books several times and make yourself master of all the biographical details etc: since you do not naturally remember things ‘to quote’ you must simply (as many another) learn by heart the ‘pivot’ passages which illustrate important qualities. Thus in Milton I you would quote ‘That to the height of this great argument / I may assert eternal Providence / And justify the ways of God to Man’ ⁴⁷ to illustrate the moral purpose, as a commentator would say, and the passage about ‘Faery-elves’ ⁴⁸ (near the end) for his Romanticism: and find out from the notes where he is imitating the classics or the Italians etc. Never having done this kind of thing I can’t say what are the best annotated editions of these books: but doubtless any ‘English master’ at Campbell could tell you. I scarcely think that you ought to need any tuition for the English: nor would I recommend Helen–<the unspeakable Helen>. Can you get hold of any old papers on the subjects to give you an idea of the sort of questions they ask? That is a very great help. The one and only method in reading Latin is to go slowly and scientifically at first, looking for the verb etc in the old childish way: to rush like a bull in a china shop is fatal. As for the composition, it must be taught. Whether you enjoy it or not, the mere working for this exam. will do you an enormous amount of good: you have no idea how routine work and exactness improve the brain. I, for instance, have gained enormously in clearness and honesty of thought from my last year’s work. I am reading Bergson now and find all sorts of things plain sailing which were baffling a year ago.

Without a scholarship I do not think you can manage on less than £300 a year: £250 might be just possible, but most uncomfortable and your attention would be everlastingly settled on money matters. (Some colleges, by the way, have musical scholarships: would you have any chance for one of those?).

I hope you won’t mind my calling your attention to one other necessity–that of a drastic revision in your methods of spelling, which are at present a trifle too eccentric for general acceptance. I am afraid if the first page of your English paper contained such peculiarities as ‘unprepaired’, ‘Hellen’, ‘reallized’, ‘overate’ (over-rate?) it might prejudice an examiner! (It has just struck [me] that of course ‘overate’ would be the past tense of ‘over-eat’ but that can’t be what you mean–I never over-eat your abilities.) This, of course, is a matter which can easily be put right: and I know that you are not bothering about it in a letter to me, as indeed there is no reason why you should.

Our anthology ‘The Way’s the Way’ is to come out in autumn. The contributors are Carola Oman ⁴⁹ (the daughter of the historian), Margaret Gidding (a friend of Pasley’s), Pasley, Baker and myself. My own pieces are 6 in number, one of which is the longish ‘Wild Hunt’ which I think you saw: it was sent, in a slightly different form to ‘Odds & Ends’. Most of the others I think you have seen, but you would not remember them by their names. Blackwell has the audacity to talk of ‘five or six shillings’ as a price for the book and seems to hope for a profit: I suppose he ought to know, but I feel dubious.

You ask about Baker, and I hardly know how to describe him. He was at a mixed school of a very modern type, where everyone seems to have written, painted and composed. He is so clairvoyant that in childhood ‘he was afraid to look round the room for fear of what he might see’. He got a decoration in France for doing some work in an aeroplane over the lines under very deadly fire: but he maintains that he did nothing, for he was ‘out of his body’ and could see his own machine with ‘someone’ in it, ‘roaring with laughter’. He has a bad heart. He was a conscientious objector, but went to the war ‘because this degradation and sin might be just the very sacrifice which was demanded of him’. He maintains that everything in Algernon Blackwood is quite possible: and though the particular cases may be fictitious, ‘things of that sort’ are quite common. He is engaged to be married. In appearance, he is about my height, with very fair hair, glasses, remarkable eyes and according to the Minto, rather like you. I like and admire him very much, though at times I have doubts on his sanity. He is almost exactly my own age. He is quite different from Pasley, who represents rather the best type of the average English ‘nice boy’ and combines literature and athletics.

It is really quite delightful here. I walk into Oxford every morning down a green lane ⁵⁰ and across the bridges and islands of the Cherwell: they are all white with may and quite deserted at that time. I have had one bathe. The Minto and I ‘drank a dish of tea’ with Miss Plowman the other day, and came away a trifle ‘bethumped with words’.⁵¹ I should like to see her and Tchanie together.

I am trying to imagine what your life is like these days, and always hoping that nothing will turn up to change your mind. What hours do you work? and do you find time to go for walks? You must begin to write something now, whether good or bad, in order to acquire a faculty of expression: for of course, whatever you take up here, you will do a lot of essay writing. It is simply splendid to think of all the difference between now and a few months back: perhaps you are hardly enjoying the change yet, but I have no doubt there is a good time coming. If you can pass a year or two here with success, learning what you want to know and making friends, you will still be able to go back to the painting. The loss of time is serious: but more, far more than compensated by the extra power and brain you would take to your work. Write soon or I shall augur a relapse.

Yours

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP VI: 192):

[University College]

Sunday.

Postmark: 23 June 1920

My dear Papy,

I am very sorry to hear of Mr Henessy’s death. ⁵² Although you did not often mention him I think I have heard you say that he visited you in the office nearly every Saturday: it is just that sort of regularity in a friendship which, on each separate occasion, may be taken for granted and may count for little, but which in its cumulative effect is very strong. I too in a short space of time have lost some of the best friends I had: but of course the long years of intercourse knit a closer bond than even the warmest of friendships which the war cut short after a few months. You are wrong in supposing I never met him: though I do not know when, I distinctly remember him coming out to lunch, long ago, in Mammy’s time, and even have some hazy idea of what he looked like. He was a biggish man was he not, and wore a short beard?

Now for a dramatic bit of news. Picture me yesterday strolling along ‘the High’ neither fearing nor purposing any evil in the world. Suddenly, as happens when one is wool gathering, I found my eyes fixed on a face that came towards me. Curious…I should know it…ah, yes, some woman who happens to be rather like Mrs McNeill. But no: there is a growing uneasiness: it is Mrs McNeill ⁵³ and–horror of horrors–‘Tchainie’ is with her. Next minute the streets of this learned city echoed to her stentorian greeting. Tomorrow we are ‘going to have tea somewhere’ for the wonder and admiration of my fellow citizens.

I know from experience how slow Arthur is to accept alterations in a letter. But is it not true that we are all least ready to be corrected in the things which we do worst? My friend Baker for instance will let you criticize his poetry (which is good) ad infinitum: but any logical argument about his views on religion, philosophy, or politics (which are what Johnson calls ‘undigested’) is treated with the polite tolerance of unassailed superiority.

Thank you very much for the cheque. An appreciative College has awarded me £5 worth of books as a prize for getting a 1st. The other man in Univ. who did likewise of course had chosen his several weeks ago: I, after nearly giving up the problem as insoluble, have just sent in my list.

I enclose a sketch of the real Poynton. He not only has two sons, but a daughter. Didn’t I ever tell you about Carlyle and the daughter’s christening?

your loving son,

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

[University College]

Sunday [27? June 1920]

My dear Arthur,

Do you think Davis ⁵⁴ is a good teacher? I should be sorry to weaken your confidence in him, but I don’t like his just passing over the Oratio-Obliqua and saying you won’t get anything as hard in Smalls. I think with care and patience–but so few schoolmasters have any patience–anyone could be led to master a reported speech in Caesar: and it is just possible you might get an equally difficult Unseen. My Unseen was the passage from Statius (Davis will show it you) beginning ‘Crimine quo merui juvenis, placidissime divum’: ⁵⁵ it is a lovely little poem; have a look at it and see if you can make it out.

I have had a delightful windfall: £5 worth of books as a prize from College for getting a First. Oh ye gods, if this had come four or five years ago, what raptures and debatings, what making and re-making of lists had been! As it was I had great difficulty in making them out at all, being perpetually haunted by the fear that I should afterwards find out that I had got all the things I really did NOT want. It is a dismal sign of breaking up and old age that I look forward to their arrival with very luke warm pleasure. The nicest among them all will be Hall’s ‘Ancient History of the Nearer East’ ⁵⁶–which bears to some extent on my work in Herodotus, but goes beyond it.

This subject of ancient history is now one of my absorbing interests: Herodotus is pure delight, and so are the modern writers who comment on [him]. Isn’t the magic of mere names wonderful? Babylon, Nineveh, Darius, the Pharaohs–I revel in every trace of them–and to see things piecing together: a story in Herodotus and a story in the Book of Kings, backed up by an inscription newly unearthed in Mesopotamia or a scrap of Persian legend! However, this may not interest you.

‘Abraham Lincoln’ ⁵⁷ came here last term and all the world except me went to see it: I have heard it praised by everyone. It is very cheering to see these ‘literary’ plays with verse in them like the Dynasts ⁵⁸ and Drinkwater’s one, on the stage at all. Fifty years ago I don’t suppose they’d have got a hearing.

My imagination boggles at the idea of you–or myself–on a motor byke. When you come up here I suppose you will become one of the young men who toot-toot-toot up and down the High clad in overalls: and instead of the Muses it will be spanners and magnetos and intermezzos and cut-outs and petrol that will fill our conversation. Ah well!, I must move with the times. I can’t quite rise to a motorbyke but perhaps I could get a scooter (Picture–Excellenz and myself going to Church on scooters ‘Ah–these scooters are r-r-r-otten tools: the thing’s intolerable’)

This letter was begun I don’t know how long ago. ‘Sunday’ is all I can find at the top: but whether it was a week or a fortnight ago I can’t say. I’m sorry: a mood of laziness has been upon me. It has been one of those periods when we do nothing because we always feel tired and feel tired because [we] do nothing. Also–Tchanie is here: I have chust returned from lunching with her and her amiable mother, with the usual exhausting effect. Mrs McNeil has made several exquisitely ridiculous remarks in her solemn style, but they would be spoiled on paper. Tchanie has been strongly urging the advantages which would result from your having Helen as a tutor: and, though you may fancy that I have been talked over, I would advise you to think of it. When I said before that you didn’t need a tutor for English, I am afraid I was thinking rather of the mere ‘getting up’ of the books: for essays etc you really do need someone to put you up to those little tricks of vocabulary and rounding off sentences which may seem trivial but which examiners demand. Whether Helen is the best person you can get, is, of course, quite a different story: if you had any authority outside Tchanie’s for believing her to be good, I should not let any personal dislike stand in the way. Who are the alternatives? The divine mother & daughter have mentioned some other McNeil at Wadham who appears to be a friend of yours:⁵⁹ did you ever speak to me of him?–you know I can never remember names. The publication of our Anthology has been put off to an indefinite date because of a printing strike: I shall improve the interval by correcting my contributions out of recognition.

The only book I have read with satisfaction lately is Mackail’s ‘Lectures on Poetry’:⁶⁰ I think he is one of my favourite moderns–he always has just the right point of view and deals with the right subject: he has sent me back to ‘Endymion’ which I read for some time in a church porch yesterday afternoon. Otherwise books have been absorbed in the general inertia of this time. I hope you are having exactly opposite experiences.

Yours

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP VI: 195–6):

University College,

Oxford

25th July 1920

My dear Papy,

I should have answered you before but I have been engaged in entertaining the Colonel. He, despite the efforts of a tyrannical and slave driving general staff, is still managing to keep body and soul together and to sustain his labours with that equanimity for which he is justly famed. Contrary to your fears, he, as yet, [has] only one car: which he proposes to sell and buy another. As soon as his leave begins he is going to motor me to Liverpool, via Malvern, and so home. I am still debating whether I can sufficiently brace my nerves to such an ordeal.

But indeed one should not at the present moment talk in joke about ordeals: for by all accounts you are approaching a real one at home. Do the ‘Times’ accounts of the Belfast rioting exaggerate or the reverse? ⁶¹ I am glad to note that so far it has been mainly confined to its traditional grounds at the other end of town, and also that it usually takes place ‘after hours’. A wise man these days will do well to survey the situation chiefly from the study. When I come home I shall (like Lundy in the play) buy a favour with green on one side and orange on the other, turning the appropriate colour outwards according to circumstances. What between this business at home and the Bolshevists nearly in Germany, one feels inclined to despair. Are all efforts made for the world as utterly barren in results as the terrible effort of this war has undoubtedly proved?

Your mention of the charms of biography reminds me of a book I saw the other day which would be much in your line–a translation of the diary kept by the late Shah of Persia during his tour of Europe. This is indeed to ‘see ourselves as others see us’. Thus for instance ‘the people of London are taught to pay great respect to their police, who are comely young men in a peculiar uniform: whatsoever offends them is judged worthy of death’. Or again (on the way from Dover) ‘the train proceeded at such a speed that fire came out of the wheels and set one of the coaches ablaze: the mechanics extinguished the fire: then we continued our journey’. Still better, (referring to Edward VII as Prince of Wales in kilts): ‘Now the peculiarity of Scottish costume is this–that the legs are left bare to the thighs’. This is a greater treasure than the Young Visiters: ⁶² but I have room for only one more quotation. ‘The waves rose and a violent storm began: the great Wazeer, the (here follow several unpronounceable officials) etc. were much disturbed. Thanks to Allah, We retained Our composure’. ⁶³ (Room for an illustration by George Morrow ⁶⁴ I think!)

I had nearly forgotten to tell you that Uncle and Aunt Hamilton ⁶⁵ were here for a night on their tour. If any man has ever been successful in screwing the honey out of life it is he. One cannot help admiring the skill with which he knows exactly how far selfishness can go without rebounding on himself: he has learned to a nicety how much every plank will bear. At the same time this worldly wisdom which has an appetite for everything and yet can be content with little, which knows what can be got out of life and does not expect more, would be almost a virtue, so pleasant is it and so sensible, if it were not centred completely on self. He made one good ‘mot’ here–that ‘England would be an excellent country to tour in were it not for the Cathedrals’. I hear that you were very nearly asked to take John in their absence but were finally rejected in favour of Glenmachan. No doubt you feel the affront bitterly. Hoping that you are otherwise well.

your loving son,

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP VI: 198–9):

University College,

Oxford

Aug. 11th 1920

My dear Papy,

Thanks for your letter and the enclosure. Of this latter I scarcely know what to make. Your interpretation of it as meaning that I am still in the army seems inevitable. The fact being that hundreds of us who asked for temporary commissions in the regulars were, on the quiet, given permanent commissions in the special reserve. But unless my memory plays me very false, all the newspapers published a statement some time ago to the effect that those in my position would be ‘deemed to have resigned’ their commissions unless they wrote expressing a wish to the contrary before a certain date. Is it of any use for me to write and mention this? In the meantime I am making all enquiries I can about the subject. If anything should happen so suddenly as to prevent my ‘concerting a plan’ with you, I could, as a last resource, go to the solicitor here. At all events its no good blinding ourselves to the fact that if another emergency occurs, everyone will be pushed into it again by public opinion or conscription, commission or no: to be out of the army would mean only a few months lease of freedom. I cannot say that I now face such a prospect with anything more than resignation–once was enough. However, I am convinced that this country cannot now go to war: if we try, it will be a case of fighting our English revolutionaries at home, and then we shall all have our backs to the wall and nothing will matter much.

In all seriousness, I think we have now arrived at the point where a wise man can do no more than wait for the end with what grace he can: and it is hard to summon much grace if you meet as many traitors and cranks in our own class as I do here, hankering for the blessing of Soviet rule at once. Only boys of course, as you will say: but it is usually a few fools who start the shooting which the wise heads cannot stop.

I quite forgot to tell you the result of my board: perhaps it was so sweet a morsel that I feared to part with it–I was awarded £20 down in lieu of further pension! I wrote and protested on the ground that even the last board had given me a 20% disability which I understood entitled me to something more. They said the matter could not be reconsidered. The ultimate result of this will be I suppose that I am counted ‘fit’ again for anything that may turn up: the immediate result is that I shall have to ask you to make up the extra £50 per annum. I am sorry to have to do so, but the necessity of keeping my allowance, as it was with the pension, depends on the same conditions of life everywhere, which makes me reluctant to ask.

Under the unwritten laws of social humbug the Henry’s ⁶⁶ certainty that you would not come if asked did not justify them in passing you by. You were quite right not to send a present. The weather here is almost frosty, and it usually rains. I think it likely that the Colonel and I may advance by rail after all.

your loving son,

Jack