’…Follow the night hag, when, called In secret riding through the air she comes Lured with the smell of infant blood, to dance With Leopard witches, while the labouring moon Eclipses at their charms.’124
Don’t you like the Leopard witches? How you will love Milton some day! By the way we may remark in passing that John Silence is one of the nicest 7d’s in paper and so forth that I have ever seen. I wonder how people would laugh if they could hear us smacking our lips over our 7d’s and Everymans just as others gloat over rare folios and an Editio Princeps? But after all, we are surely right to get all the pleasure we can, and even in the cheapest books there is a difference between coarse and nice get up. I wonder what a book called ‘Letters from Hell’ published at 1/-by Macmillan would be like?’125
This week’s instalment I enjoyed especially: the idea of the hair so beautiful to the eye so coarse to the touch is very suggestive, and you keep us in fine doubt as to whether your faery is going to turn out good and benevolent or terrible. You complain that your tale is commonplace, but I don’t know anything that you think is like it, and I hope that you will really never think of giving it up unfinished–all the same, if you do–for which I can see no earthly reason–don’t be discouraged, because we very rarely succeed in finishing a first work. If you saw the number of ‘beginnings’ I have made! By the by, there is one little point I must grouse at this week. You say that the faery resumed her ‘normal’ size. What was her normal size? We saw her first as a little figure on a leaf, and she hasn’t changed since. Do you mean that she took on human size? Of course a few trifling changes when you revise will make this quite clear. The point of names is rather difficult: ‘Dennis’ I like, but the old Irish attractions of ‘Desmond’ are very strong. I really don’t know what I should advise.
I am sorry you disapprove of my remarks in the romance. But you must remember that it is not Christianity itself I am sneering at, but Christianity as taught by a formal old priest like Ulfin, and accepted by a rather priggish young man like Bleheris.126 Still, I fear you will like the main gist of the story even less when you grasp it–if you ever do, for as is proper in romance, the inner meaning is carefully hidden.
I am really very sorry to hear about your new record, but so many of your Odeons have been successful that I cannot reasonably have the pleasure of saying ‘I told you so’. Talking about music, I have at last found out the exact number of the Chopin piece I like so well–it is the 21st Prelude. Look it out, and tell me if it is not the best music in the world?
I am afraid it is mere foolishness to praise that rhyme of mine as you do. Remember, you know exactly the occasion that gave rise to it, and can read between the lines, while to others it would perhaps be scarcely intelligible: still it is nice to be able to please even one reader–as you do too, for all your talk. In a way that sort of double-meaning in the title ‘Lady of the Leaf would be rather fascinating I think.
I am glad to hear your remarks about the different pleasures of painting, writing etc. I quite agree with you, ‘work’ of this kind, though it worries and tortures us, tho’ we get sick of it and dissatisfied with it and angry, after all it is the greatest pleasure in life–there is nothing like it. Good night old man.
Jack
P.S. Is Dennis in bathing things all this time, or ‘au naturel’? The point is not without interest.
P.P.S. Up in my room I have just read over the whole ‘Watersprite’ again. I have not done it justice in this letter, the whole story is topping and the air of mystery that hangs about Her makes one very keen to go on. I am not putting this in because I want to pleasure you, but because it just strikes me at the moment and must come out. Go on and prosper–there goes half past. So gute nacht du lieber kamarad, bon soir mon vieux.
J.
TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 114-15):
[Gastons]
21st July 1916.
My dear Papy,
I was just beginning to get up what I considered a very legitimate ‘grouse’, but must admit that you offer the best of reasons for the offence. I am glad that you enjoyed their visit,127 and wish that I could have been one of the party:–at least so I may now say with safety when ‘the tyrranny is over past’.128 Many thanks for your indulgent permission to take a Scotch trip–never fear, we’ll keep your place in order.
Kirk tells me he has sent you a list of the Scholarships and Exhibitions at colleges in the big group, which we will be able to go over together in the holidays. It is cheering to see that we have some fifteen to come and go over, most of them in the first rank.
My fellow sojourner at Gastons is going home this day (Friday) week, so I think it would be best for me to choose the following Monday. I forget what state the cross-channel routes are in at present, but if Fleetwood is going I had sooner travel by it: failing that by Liverpool with Larne as a pis aller. So if you could book a stateroom for the 31st, and forward a few ‘crowns for convoy’ I shall do myself the honour of waiting on you at Leeborough on Tuesday morning the first. (You may notice the phrasing of the last sentence, the insidious influence of that excellent man, Major Pendennis.)129
I had not heard before about Dick130 and was very glad and proud of the news. As you say, he has plenty of ‘guts’ if only he has the luck to stick out. Things look a little brighter at the front now, though I am afraid it will need many such successes to bring the business to an end. Kirk went up to London on Wednesday to see the elder Smythe boy, who is at home wounded, for the third time.
‘Summer is a-cummen in’131 here at last, and we have actually had no rain since Saturday.
your loving
son Jack
TO ARTHUR GREEVES (LP V: 115-17):
[Gastons]
July 25 1916 and be d-d to you.
My dear Arthur,
That thrice accursed fellow pupil of mine is at present sitting up in the work room so I cannot go and steal a page from his exercise book to write on, as I have been doing all the term–you must be content therefore with these odd scraps: indeed I don’t see why I should write at all, as by writing both the first and the last letter of this term I have treated you to two more than you deserve; however, I will make a note that it is your turn to begin after the holidays.
You are quite mistaken if you suppose that in asking about Dennis’ bathing things I suggested that he OUGHT to have them on–I only wanted to get a perfectly clear picture: still I don’t see any parallel between him and Bleheris in knickerbockers (a very funny word–that or Bickerknocker would be a good name for a dwarf if either of us should want one), because I take it your story is modern. But of course I quite agree that your hero is far better without them. It seems rather unnatural though to pass over any question of embarrassment in absolute silence: the fey of course, as a non-human being, may