Collected Letters Volume One: Family Letters 1905–1931. Walter Hooper. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Walter Hooper
Издательство: HarperCollins
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Жанр произведения: Биографии и Мемуары
Год издания: 0
isbn: 9780007332656
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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 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 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,

      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,