Collected Letters Volume Two: Books, Broadcasts and War, 1931–1949. Walter Hooper. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Walter Hooper
Издательство: HarperCollins
Серия:
Жанр произведения: Биографии и Мемуары
Год издания: 0
isbn: 9780007332663
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rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_dd86df09-5339-5bc6-bd6c-318bf7ebdb07">76 William Morris, A Dream of John Ball (1888); Love is Enough (1872); The Wood Beyond the World (1894).

      Warnie, too, went to Holy Communion on Christmas Day 1931. He wrote in his diary that day: ‘I attended the service with very mixed feeling, gladness predominating at once again finding myself a full member of the Church after so many years of indifference or worse…I came away feeling profoundly thankful that I have once again become a communicant, and intend (D.V.) [Deo Volente-“God Willing”] to go regularly at least four times a year in future’ (BF). On receiving the present letter from his brother, Warnie wrote on 17 January 1932: ‘A letter from | today containing the news that he too has once more started to go to Communion, at which I am delighted. Had he not done so, I, with my altered views would have found—hardly a bar between us, but a Jack of a complete identity of interest which I should have regretted’ (ibid.).

       TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

      [The Kilns]

      Jan 10th 1932

      My dear Arthur,

      I was glad to hear from you again, and sorry you are so dull. Perhaps you are suffering from too much turkey and ‘plumb’ pudding—or too many late nights and dances! How did you manage to get your mother’s consent to the introduction of a dog—I thought she was the insuperable difficulty?

      I quite understand the mood in wh. you fall back upon detective stories, though I have never been able to understand how that mood could lead to detective stories. I mean, I know well from experience that state of mind in which one wants immediate and certain pleasure from a book, for nothing—i.e. without paying the price of that slight persistence, that almost imperceptible tendency not to go on, which, to be honest, nearly always accompanies the reading of [a] good book. Not only accompanies by the way, but (do you agree) actually makes part of the pleasure. A little sense of labour is necessary to all perfect pleasures I think: just as (to my palate at least) there is no really delicious taste without a touch of astringency—the ‘bite’ in alcoholic drinks, the resistance to the teeth in nuts or meat, the tartness of fruit, the bitterness of mint sauce. The apple must not be too sweet, the cheese must not be too mild. Still, I know the other mood, when one wants a book of sheer pleasure.