Collected Letters Volume One: Family Letters 1905–1931. Walter Hooper

This is a rare gift of yours: you should yet do great things with it: you are a fool if you don’t cultivate it. Perhaps, because you paint and read as well as play, you realize the imagination of a composer’s mind perfectly, and can always bring out to a sensible (in the old sense of the word) listener anything at all that there is in the notes. Of course, all this is the praise of an amateur: but the praise of an honest amateur who has a genuine, tho’ non-techniqual taste for music, is worth something at least.

I agree with you that the music of Lohengrin, so far as I know it is delightful: nor do I see what is wrong with the story, tho’ of course the splendid wildness of the ‘Ring’⁸² must be lacking. On the whole, however, I am not sure that any music from it I know, is not perhaps cast in a lower mould than ‘Parsifal’⁸³ & the ‘Ring’. Although, indeed the prelude–which you wouldn’t listen to when I played it–is quite as fine I think as that from ‘Parsifal’.

What is your opinion of W. Jaffe–little Vee-Lee?⁸⁴ He did one thing for which he can never be forgiven–dropping in and staying till eleven on the first night of my brother’s leave. The Hamiltons came over on another, so we had only one evening alone together in peace and comfort. On the whole, tho’, he is a decent crittur, I suppose. Have you ever heard their gramaphone? I wonder what its like.

Which reminds me, did you hear the new Glenmachen record–a solo by the Russian base–Chaliapin⁸⁵ from ‘Robert Le Diable’.⁸⁶ The orchestration is absolutely magnificent and the singing as good. I only wish I could afford ‘the like of them’, don’t you?

      I shan’t write again this term now–jolly glad it’s so near the end.

      Yours

      Jack

       TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 9):

      [Gastons]

      Moon Day. A good codotta that.) 28 July 1915]

      My dear Papy,

I was very glad to get both your letters, and sorry if I worried you at a busy moment. Willie’s absence must be a great discomfort, and of course I shall understand if letters are short or overdue just at present. No. A registered letter is no equivalent to ‘speaking sharply’ to one, and I am therefore in no need to the German gentleman’s remorse–or ‘again-bite’ to be Teutonic. But at sixteen we will do much for excitement, a new experience. ‘What’ said I to myself ‘tho’ the shades of Plato and Sophocles wait upon my pleasure, the treasures of Rome, the brilliance of France, the knowledge of Germany attend my nod? I am out of the world here. While the great war of all histories, nations and languages is waged hard by, shall I remain like a dormouse, inactive, apathetic. A thousand times no’, (as a friend of yours in Punch said on a memorable occasion), ‘I will have excitement I will taste of new experiences, soul-stirring adventures’–and gripping my hat with a cry of ‘D’audace et toujours d’audace’⁸⁷ I rushed out into the night and–sent a registered letter!

      I don’t know that there is any news here: that Macmullen girl, the theatrical lady, is staying here just at present. The summer here is one of the worst Kirk remembers, being very wet and making a special point of raining whenever the poor people are trying to mow or make hay. Fortunately the amount of corn we grow at home is insignificant as regards the country’s needs. All the same, at a time like the present every little counts, and if this sort of thing is going on all over England it is rather a pity.

      (Later on.) I have spent a ghastly evening being used as a lay figure by Miss Macmullen for bandages–as she is going to volunteer to something or other. I have been treated successively for a broken arm, a sprained ankle, and a wound in the head. This, with the adjoining complement of pins, small talk etc., is a good night’s work. I can now sympathise with your attitude towards the excellent game of ‘hair cut or shaved’. Ah well, I suppose half an hour’s codotta with some bits of lint is not a great sacrifice to the war. Still, I am really too exhausted to write any longer, and everyone is going to bed.

      your loving

      son Jack

      Jack arrived in Belfast on 31 July and was there for the next eight weeks. Mr Kirkpatrick expected him to continue with some work, and he wrote to him on 17 August saying:

      I suggest you should order…the following: Plato: The Phaedo, if you have not got it. Demosthenes: De Corona. Tacitus: The Annals. Aeschylus: The Agamemnon…I expect you are browsing at present on the pastures of general literature, and this of course is as it should be. If however you find English too easy and sigh for more worlds to conquer, I recommend the perusal of any German book you may happen to come across. (LP V: 12)

      During this time Lewis added six more poems to his ‘Metrical Meditations of a Cod’, at least two of which are included in his Collected Poems.

       TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 128-9):

      [Gastons 17?

      September 1915]

      My dear Papy,

After a week of mutual waiting for a letter, I suppose it is my duty to take up the pen. Things have been so developing here in various ways that I have not really had time to settle down. A wonderful thing has happened–yesterday I got a fellow pupil!⁸⁸ It is a nephew of Mrs. Howard Ferguson’s who is to come and read with Kirk for the paymaster’s department of the navy, and is about my own age. Of course it is just a bit of crumpled rose leaf to have this inroad, but as he will spend nearly all his time at Leatherhead taking special classes for chemistry and solid mathematics–whatever that name of terror may mean–one cannot complain. He seems a decent poor creature, though of course not wildly interesting. Mrs. Ferguson came down with him on Saturday and went away the same evening. I suppose you have met her? I thought she was exceedingly nice, and was interested to hear all the Lurgan and Banbridge gossip which Mrs. K’s questions called forth, until Kirk could stand it no longer and broke in with a fifteen minute lecture on the Budget.

The boy himself was at Campbell before he came here, and I can still remember enough to pick up acquaintance in common and to criticise ‘the old place’. I hear to my surprise that Joey⁸⁹ is a ‘knut’ cricketer in his House Eleven: one never hears these tit-bits at home.

      It is a good deal warmer here than in Ireland and my cold is consequently getting better–you will be relieved to hear. Kirk is still going strong and Bookham is looking its prettiest. Any sign of the new overcoat yet? But of course it will not really be needed till much later in the year. Tell me too if you hear anything from W. I must now stop and go to bed, which I feel justified in doing because I am one up on you in the way of letters.

      your loving

      son Jack

      

      P.S. Don’t forget to tell me when you write, how that cold of yours is. Jack.

       TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W/LP V: 21-2):

      [Gastons

      5 October 1915]

      My dear Galahad,

I can’t really see why you have any more right to grouse at my not writing than I at you, but we will let it pass. And in the meantime, what do you think? It is a bit thick when one has fled from Malvern to shun one’s compeers in the seclusion of Surrey