Jack
By the way, what sort of voice has a ‘cracked turnip’. See your last letter.
TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 134-5):
[Gastons]
27/Oct./16.
My dear Papy,
Far be it from me to plead in extenuation of the disgusting freak of Algy that it was only fun. The debauches of a ruffian are not the less disgraceful because they are the product of levity, and Nero is said to have fiddled–about which I have my own views–on a famous occasion. As a matter of fact, to be serious, if Elia’s theory that ‘the best puns are the worst’181 is true also of Limericks, Swinburne’s Majorca one is a masterpiece, and so is the next one about Birmingham–though on the whole I would agree with you in preferring the ‘deserted garden’.
I was very sorry to hear of the death of ‘A Student in arms’, whose book I read last holidays as you may remember.182 I never met anything exactly like it before, it is wonderfully original and beautiful. Nothing in it however, if I remember aright, quite reaches the level of this last article, a wise and charming piece of work–and doubly so from the exquisite appropriateness with which it comes from the pen of a man who died a few days after writing it. As you say, there is almost something divine about the way in which he sums up his beliefs and his views on death, just as though he knew the end was coming and meant to finish off his work. The substance of this paper resembles Bernard Shaw’s cry, ‘Why not give Christianity a trial?’–so far at least as the writing of a scholar and a gentleman can resemble that of a Philistine. Indeed nowadays there seems to be a tendency in that direction: there is some possibility of getting back it appears, to what Christ actually did teach, and clearing away all the additions His followers have been tacking on for the last twenty centuries.
Before leaving the subject of Student in Arms’, I must draw your attention to what seems a mis-print in the sentence marked. Surely the full stop should come after ‘discouraged’, and not after ‘offend’. The author first states a general principle Anxious responsibility is discouraged’, and then goes on to quote as an example of this, the fact that ‘if our limbs offend etc.’. As it stands, the sense is not so clear.183
I am glad that all these ‘manifestations’ of Boas prove to emanate from the same ‘quella’ as editors of MSS. say: perhaps some day, he might be of use to us. Congratulate Dick from me on his decoration and Joey on his scholarship–as to which we can only pray ‘adsit omen.’
That is rather a fine article on Hackluyt in this weeks Literary Supplement184 and a good deal of it might stand as an apology–in the Newman sense of course–for my hours spent on poor Mandeville. The quotation about the deer coming down to the water ‘as we rowed’185 is particularly attractive.
How goes the picture? Even if Mr. Baker186 is not the society you would choose, still even a compulsory companion (that’s a pretty sounding mouthful) to swallow up some part of your solitary week ends is a good thing. Indeed logically, the more disagreeable the companion the more he ought to reconcile you to subsequent loneliness.
your loving
son Jack.
TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):
[Gastons
1 November 1916]
My dear Galahad,
I can’t let it pass unchallegend that you should put ‘Boewulf’ and ‘Malory’ together as if they belonged to the same class. One is a mediaeval, English prose romance and the other an Anglo Saxon epic poem: one is Christian, the other heathen: one we read just as it was actually written, the other in a translation. So you can like one without the other, and any way you must like or dislike them both for different reasons. It is always very difficult of course to explain to another person the good points of a book he doesn’t like. I know what you mean by that ‘crampy’ feeling: you mean there are no descriptions in Beowulf as in a modern book, so little is told you & you have to imagine so much for yourself.
Well, for one thing, remember that nearly all your reading is confined to about 150 years of one particular country: this is no disgrace to you, most people’s circle is far smaller. But still, compared with the world this one little period of English literature is very small, and tho’ you (and I of course) are so accustomed to the particular kinds of art we find inside it, yet we must remember that there are an infinite variety outside it, quite as good in different ways. And so, if you suddenly go back to an Anglo-Saxon gleeman’s lay, you come up against something absolutely different–a different world. If you are to enjoy it, you must forget your previous ideas of what a book should be and try and put yourself back in the position of the people for whom it was first made. When I was reading it I tried to imagine myself as an old Saxon thane sitting in my hall of a winter’s night, with the wolves & storm outside and the old fellow singing his story. In this way you get the atmosphere of terror that runs through it–the horror of the old barbarous days when the land was all forests and when you thought that a demon might come to your house any night & carry you off. The description of Grendel stalking up from his ‘fen and fastness’ thrilled me. Besides, I loved the simplicity of the old life it represents: it comes as a relief to get away from all complications about characters & ‘problems’ to a time when hunting, fighting, eating, drinking & loving were all a man had to think of it. And lastly, always remember it’s a translation which spoils most things.
As to ‘Malory’ I liked it so awfully this time–far better than before–that I don’t know what to say. How can I explain? For one thing, to me it is a world of its own, like Jane Austen. Though impossible, it is very fully realized, and all the characters are old friends, we know them so well: you get right away in those forests and somehow to me all the adventures & meetings & dragons seem very real. (I don’t beleive that last sentence conveys my meaning a bit) Then too I find in it a rest as you do in Scott: he (M. I mean) is so quiet after our modern writers & thinks of his ‘art’ so little: he is not self-conscious. Of course he doesn’t describe as Morris does, but then he doesn’t need to: in the ‘Well’ you feel it is only a tale suddenly invented and therefore everything has to be described. But the Round Table is different: it was a hundred years ago & shall be a hundred years hence. It wasn’t just made up like an ordinary tale, it grew. Malory seems to me almost a historian: his world is real to me, his characters are old friends whom you get to know better & better as you go on–he is a companiabl author & good when you’re lonely.
I suppose this sounds all rot? But after all when you say it ‘doesn’t suit you’ you strike at the root of the matter. Perhaps you can’t enjoy it just as I couldn’t enjoy Green’s Short History:187 it is not my fault that I don’t like oysters but no reasoning will make me like them. This controversy has proved even more expansive than the other: if you had given me any excuse for going on with the ‘exaltation’ one I’m afraid I should never get to bed to-night. By the way I suppose at 10 o’clock when I am beginning your letter you are just getting into bed? Remember at 10 next Wednesday night to imagine me just spreading out your