This is a digression: to go back to Warnie, it certainly must be very depressing to see so many of the Malvern lot–for whom he had a regard as genuine as it was inexplicable–dropping off like this. ‘It is an ill wind’–the proverb is rather old. But one result of the war to us seems to be that you and W., if I may say so, understand each other better than you have done for some time.
I am learning lots of things here besides the Classics–one of them being to take cold baths: and such an artist I am becoming that you will hardly know me when I get home for the brevity of my sojourn in the bath room and the prodigious amount of noise I make over it. The weather is still hot and a trifle oppressive here, but agreeable in the morning and evening.
I have been devoting this week to the reading of Othello,69 which I like as well as any Shakesperian play I have read. The part of Iago, to my mind, is something of a blemish, and the fact that his pitiless malignity has absolutely no motive leaves him rather a monster (in the Classical, not the newspaper sense of the word), than a human character. But then of course Shakespeare at his best always works on titanic lines, and the vices and virtues of Lear, Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello, Desdemona, etc., are magnified to a pitch more splendid and terrible than anything in real life.70
If I leave here on the 30th July, so as to arrive home on the last Saturday of that month, the exact half of the term ought to have fallen about four hours ago. That will make the usual twelve weeks. Only six more now! That sounds perhaps too like the old days at Malvern, but don’t suppose that because I will be glad to see you again, I am not happy and more than happy at the K’s.
your loving,
son,
Jack
TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):
[Gastons
29 June 1915]
Dear Galahad,
Did the Norns or Dana holy mother of them that die not, weave for us in that hour wherein our mothers bare us, that never should we write to each other without the first page being occupied by argument? Because, whether by the decree of fate or no, this has always been the case. First it was Shee v. Souteraines, then Tears v. Trousers, and now Larne v. Leeborough–which by the way means Little Lea. How you can have known me so long without picking up the words & tags which I use every day passes my understanding–unless I am to conclude that you are asleep half the time I am talking to you, which is very probably so.
Well about this infernal holyday: as your infantile brain–for which I have catered on this envelope–is incapable of swallowing my previous very elementary argument, I will explain my position once more in very simple terms, as follows:–
I have eight weeks vacations.
I have been invited to stay 10 days with Mrs Hamilton.71
I have accepted her invitation.
I intend to keep that promise
I don’t want to be any longer away than 10 days.
I don’t want to keep you at home on that account.
I therefore decline your kind proposal.
I am very sorry
I hope you understand. How’s that?
It may be true that it is easier to assign music to people we know, than to conjure up people to fit the music, but I deny that anyone’s character is really unlike their appearance. The physical appearance, to my mind, is the expression and result of the other thing–soul, ego, ψυχη, intellect–call it what you will. And this outward expression cannot really differ from the soul. If the correspondence between a soul & body is not obvious at first, then your conception either of that soul or that body must be wrong. Thus, I am ‘chubby’–to use your impertinent epithet, because I have a material side to me: because I like sleeping late, good food & clothes etc as well as sonnets & thunderstorms. The idealistic side of me must find an outlet somewhere, perhaps in my eye, my voice or anything else–you can judge better than I. And the other side of me exists in my countenance because it exists also in my character.
‘But’, I hear you saying, ‘this is all very well. Only what about the practised flirt with the innocent schoolgirl face & the murderer with a smile like an old woman?’ These are only seeming exceptions. The girl has or imagines she has that sort of disposition somewhere in her, or it wouldn’t be on her face: as a matter of fact, it is always ‘innocent’ (which means ignorant) people who do the most outrageous things. The murderer too, may be really a peaceful, kindly ‘crittur’, and if circumstances drive him to violence, the initial mould of the character and therefore of the face remain just the same.
I remember reading in a book called ‘The open Road’72 an extract from Hewlet’s ‘Pan and the Young Shepherd’73 which I thought splendid. Thanks to our Galahad’s detestable handwriting I can’t tell whether your book is the ‘Lore’ or the ‘Love’ of P. In any case I have never heard of it before, but, from your description, am very eager to read it. I also saw a copy of this author’s ‘Forest Lovers’74 in Carson’s last hols, but it did not attract me much. Is this new one in a decent edition?
I am glad to hear that you are keeping up the ‘illustrative’ side of your art, and shall want you to do some for my lyric poems. You can begin a picture of my ‘dream garden’ where the ‘West winds blow’. As directions I inform you it is ‘girt about with mists’, and is in ‘the shadowy country neither life nor sleep’, and is the home of ‘faint dreams’. With this Bädekers guide to it, you can start a picture. You remember, I scribble at pen and ink sketches a bit, and have begun to practise female faces which have always been my difficulty. I am improving a very little I think, and the margins of my old Greek lexicon as well as my pocket book now swarm with ‘studies’.
Only four weeks now till I shall be home again! Isn’t that a buck, at least for me–and no one else in the world really counts of course. What nonsense you talk about that ‘poor man’, my father. I am afraid it is true that he must bore Lily, but there is no fear of her boring him. I sympathize however, with the havoc which he must have wrought with a serious musical evening.
How is your gramaphone progressing, by the way, and how many records have you listed up to date? I am so sorry if this Liliputian writing has blinded you for life, but we have run out of the other sort of note paper.
Well
Jack
P.S. Have begun the ‘Proffessor’75 and as read far as the heroe’s arrival at Brussels. It is shaping very well. I believe you have read it have you not–J.
Warnie arrived in Bookham from France on 4 July 1915 and Jack, after some resistance from Mr Kirkpatrick, was permitted to accompany him home. He returned to Bookham on 9 July.
TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 1-2):
[Gastons
10? July 1915]
My dear Papy,
In reply to your note which has just this minute been handed to