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
Скачать книгу
made which is in the mouth of the pipe at this moment. I have also given the spring-tap up beyond the small pond a night turned on, and I trust that by thus controlling in-flow and outflow of water I can soon nurse the pond back to its old level.

      At any rate I don’t see how it can sink as long as its escape is bunged up. As to the degree of loss at present, as there are no perpendicular banks anywhere it is hard to gauge. I should think that the most pessimistic episode could hardly be more than ½ of a foot: i.e. a difference one is unconscious of in bathing. Still I grudge every inch. By the way, it has just occurred to me that the sinking may not be due to the draining at all: for the old ‘channel’ escape, when I looked at it just before the operations began, had certainly widened itself extremely from what I first remembered, and must have been letting out more than it ought. In that case the new pipe may have arrested rather than created a wastage.

      All the old things I objected to in Thackeray I object to still. Do you remember saying of Thomas Browne in one of your letters ‘Was there anything he didn’t love?’ One can ask just the opposite of Thackeray. He is wrongly accused of making his virtuous women too virtuous: the truth is he does not make them virtuous enough. If he makes a character what he wd. call ‘good’ he always gets his own back by making her (its always a female character) a bigot and a blockhead. Do you think, Sir, pray, that there are many slum parishes which could not produce half a dozen old women quite as chaste and affectionate as Helen Pendennis and ten times more charitable and more sensible? Still—the Major deserves his place in ones memory. So does Foker—surely the most balanced picture of the kindly vulgar young fop that there is. I’m not sure about Costigan. There’s a good deal too much of Thackeray’s habit of laughing at things like poverty and mispronunciation in the Costigan parts. Then, of course there’s ‘the style’—Who the deuce wd. begin talking about the style in a novel till all else was given up.

      Perhaps however it was just as well that A. drew me out of my course, for the place has been so increased and altered that I should have missed a good deal. The novelties include lions, tigers, polar bears, beavers etc. Bultitude was still in his old place. Wallaby wood, owing to the different season, was improved by masses of bluebells: the graceful faun-like creatures hopping out of one pool of sunshine into another over English wildflowers—and so much tamer now than when you saw them that it is really no difficulty to stroke them—and English wildbirds singing deafeningly all round, came nearer to ones idea of the world before the Fall than anything I ever hoped to see.

      One other important experience, as experiences go in a retired life, was my first visit to Covent Garden. It suddenly occurred to me this spring that my desire to hear Siegfried dated from 1912, and that 20 years was quite long enough to have waited. So I stood myself 15/-worth of ‘Amphitheatre Stalls’. I mention it here not in order to describe Siegfried (wh. I enjoyed quâ music and drama enormously) but to record my complete disillusionment as regards the Covent Garden level of performance. It was in fact exactly like any other performance of an opera: i.e. one’s inner criticism ran on the familiar lines ‘Ah this is a lovely bit coming now…what a pity that girl hasn’t a really good voice’—in fact I was on the point of saying to myself ‘By Jove its a splendid thing—what wouldn’t I give to hear it done properly at Covent Garden.’ When I say it was just like any other performance of an opera I mean that out of the eight characters two were magnificent, one ‘had been a very fine singer in his young days,’ two were quite adequate but had no v. great passages to sing, and two were frankly bad. The odd thing was that the acting was a great deal better than I had dared to expect. I had always supposed that these ‘head bummers’ were even insolently negligent of it: as a matter of fact they were distinctly good.

      Yours

      Jack.

      P.S. I had nearly forgotten to acknowledge the philosophical instrument wh. you so unexpectedly sent. After one or two experiments I am getting a gadget made for fastening it onto my belt as I can find no pocket which will keep it perpendicular. Thanks very much. It is a thing I have been vaguely wanting to possess for many years.

      I am afraid it will be a long time before I can resume proper letter writing—examining