The other article has a lot of sense in it: the writer must be like K’s friend, of whom I told you, who could give anyone points in classical literature without knowing Latin or Greek. That Butcher and Lang translation of Homer170 is very good, and so is Bacon’s bit of Lucretius, tho’ not as beautiful as his own suggestion that ‘it be with pity’. Of course I suppose only the very greatest poetry will stand translation: fancy a French prose version of Swinburne.
I am at present reading a book which you would enjoy, ‘The letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple’.171 In case you have forgotten who they were, you can turn to Macaulay’s essay on the latter.172 They lived in Cromwell’s time, and the letters are very quaint. In the notes the editor also quotes an account of the ‘remove these baubles’ scene by an eye-witness, who was apparently a member of the old aristocracy and tells us indignantly how the Lord Protector came into the House in ‘grey worsted stockings’.173 They had their own way of writing love letters in those days: Mistress Osborne begins hers ‘Sir’ like a letter to a newspaper, and ends up ‘your humble servant’ or ‘your faithful friend’. Almost a la Gordon.
your loving
son Jack.
TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):
[Gastons]
25th Oct 1916
My dear Galahad,
As usually happens in these sort of things the violent controversy that we have been having for the last three weeks (& which I quite agree with you in giving up) has obscured the original subject of the discussion ‘exaltation’. I want to know if you understand that sort of ‘fey’ state of mind which I described, or tried to describe, as coming on when one is very drowzy. Say what you think of this in your next letter. The question arose out of the ‘Morte’ which I have now read from the beginning of the Quest of the Grael to the end, thus finishing the whole thing. I certainly enjoyed it much better than before, and wished that I had the first volume here as well. The quietness of the end, and the description of Arthur’s death are particularly good–you must give it another try sometime.
It was silly of me to ask you about ‘Cranford’ etc, as I have a MacMillan’s list here and could have looked them up myself if I had had the sense: but I suppose you regard that as a big ‘if! I can understand that it is not pleasing to have these in the same edition as the Jane Austens, tho’ for me of course it would make a nice change. I don’t know when I shall buy some new books, as I am at present suffering from a flash of poverty–poverty comes in flashes like dulness or pleasure. When I do it will be either ‘Our Village’, ‘Cranford’ or Chaucer’s ‘Troilus & Cressida’, if I can get a decent edition of it. By all accounts it is much more in my line than the ‘Canterbury Tales’, and anyway I can take no more interest in them since I have discovered that my Everyman edition is abridged & otherwise mutilated. I wish they wouldn’t do that (‘Lockhart’,174 you say, is another case) without telling you. I can’t bear to have anything but what a man really wrote.
I have been reading the quaintest book this week, ‘The Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple’ in Everyman. I suppose, as a historian you will know all about those two, but in case you don’t they lived in Cromwell’s time. It is very interesting to read the ordinary everyday life of a girl in those days, and, tho’ of course they are often dull there is a lot in them you would like: especially a description of how she spends the day and another of a summer evening in the garden. It is funny too, to notice that, just like us, she says that she never wished very hard for anything in her life without being dissapointed. But then I suppose everyone in the world has said that sometime or other. It is perhaps not a book to read straight through but well worth having.
My other reading–in French–has been Maeterlinck’s ‘Oiseau Bleu’: of course I have read it before in English and seen it on the stage, as you know, but I am absolutely delighted to read it again. Now that I have the original I wish you would adopt my English version, which is yours forever for the taking whenever you care to walk up to my room at home and find it on the little open bookcase. You could do it to day when you are home for lunch: I don’t know why you have never read this glorious book before, but please do as I suggest & (though it is always dangerous, as we know, to recommend) I think you will have some real joy out of it. The scenes in the Temple of Night and in the Kingdom of the Future are exactly in our line.
Unfortunately we have not got a complete set of Scott here–only odd Everyman copies of which ‘The Fair Maid of Perth’ is not one. The earlier period is of course all the better for me, in fact to be honest I am childish enough to like ‘Ivanhoe’ better than any of his, and next to it ‘Quentin Durward’. What is ‘Guy Mannering’ like? The alternative title of ‘The Astrologer’ sounds attractive but of course it may not have much to do with it.175
How’s the poor, miserable, ill-fated, star-crossed, hapless, lonely, neglected, misunderstood puppy getting along? What are you going to call him, or rather, to speak properly, how hight he? Don’t give him any commonplace name, and above all let it suit his character & appearance. Something like Sigurd, Pelleas or Mars if he is brisk and warlike, or Mime, Bickernocker or Knutt if he is ugly and quaint. Or perhaps he is dead by now, poor little devil!
The book you refer to is ‘How to Form a Literary Taste’ by Arnold Benett:176 the edition is pretty but the book is not of any value. The very title–as if you set out to ‘learn’ literature the way you learn golf–shews that the author is not a real book-lover but only a priggish hack. I never read any of his novels & don’t want to. Have you? By the way, he is a rather violent atheist, so I suppose I shall meet him by
‘The fiery, flaming flood of Phlegethon’, 177
as good old Spencer has it. I am sure Lockhart’s Life of Scott would be good, but 5 vols. at 3/6 each is too much: at any rate I had sooner get Boswell if I were going to make a start on biography. I have read to day–there’s absolutely no head or tale in this letter but you ought to be used to that by now–some 10 pages of Tristam Shandy’178 and am wondering whether I like it. It is certainly the maddest book ever written or ‘ever wrote’ as dear Dorothy Osborne would say. It gives you the impression of an escaped lunatic’s conversation while chasing his hat on a windy May morning. Yet there are beautiful serious parts in it though of a sentimental kind, as I know from my father. Have you ever come across it?
Tang-Tang there goes eleven o’clock ‘Tis almost faery time’.179 Don’t you simply love going to bed. To curl up warmly in a nice warm bed, in the lovely darkness, that is so restful & then gradually drift away into sleep…Perhaps to enjoy this properly you must stay up till 11 working fairly hard at something–even a letter like this–so as to be really hungry for sleep. At home, like you, I often get started off on a train of thought which keeps me awake: here I am always too tired tho’ goodness knows, eleven is early enough compared with some peoples times. It is strange, somehow, to read about concerts & Bill Patterson’s visits etc; when I am at Bookham everything at home seems a little unreal. Each of