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

Автор: Walter Hooper
Издательство: HarperCollins
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Жанр произведения: Биографии и Мемуары
Год издания: 0
isbn: 9780007332663
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from day to day and what a relish they got out of it, you almost begin to envy them. Perhaps the tragedies of real life contain more consolation and fun and gusto than the comedies of literature?

      I wish you could see this place at present. The birch wood is a black bristly mass with here and there a last red leaf. The lake is cold, cold lead colour. The new moon comes out over the fir trees at the top and a glorious wail of wind comes down from them. I certainly like my garden better at winter than any other time.

      I hope I shall soon have a letter from you. This, by the bye, is not a letter, but a note of acknowledgement. And I hope you will not think me any less grateful for your criticisms because of what I have said. I do appreciate your pains most deeply.

      Do you ever take a run down to your cottage in winter. It would be ‘rather lovely’.

      Yours

      Jack

       TO HIS BROTHER (W):

      The Kilns

      Dec 12th 1932

      My dear W–

      A thousand welcomes to Havre (of hated memory.) We have had so many alarms about you that I shall hardly believe it till I see you with my own eyes. But on that score, and on all your last six month’s adventures there is so much to be said that it is absurd to begin. You would be amused to hear the various hypotheses that were entertained during your long summer silence—that you had been captured by bandits—were in jail—had gone mad—had married—had married a Chinese woman. My own view of course was ‘Indeed he’s such a fellow etc,’ but I found it hard to maintain this against the riot of rival theories.

      I have not had any opportunity to reply till now to your questions about money. We shall do very well on what your percentage comes to: the only request I have to make on the bursarial side is that you must wash less (I mean your clothes, not your person)—your present standard of shifting being the one item in which you live beyond our scale. Minto says I ought not to mention this, but I expect you would prefer to know. (Of course if you like to wash any number of clothes yourself, no one will object!)

      I am examining at the moment, but lightly as you can see from the fact that I manage about an hour’s Lockhart per diem. I hope to finish my papers on the 21st: but the Award is not till the day after Boxing Day, so that it looks like Jan. 1st for our walk, ‘from which I promise myself more satisfaction, perhaps, than is possible.’ The date will be a good omen. I am so stiff from carrying that infernal tree up that I hardly know what to do with myself.

      The only thing that can really dash your home coming will be the cold: you will have to ‘cokker’ yourself like anything for the first few weeks, unless this frost breaks. Well—and now to Chaucer’s papers. But even they can hardly depress me at such a moment as this

      Yours

      Jack.

       TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

      [The Kilns

      17 December 1932]

      My dear Arthur,

      You really must forgive me for being a slack correspondent in term time. I think we have talked of this before! However, I was much to blame for not at least letting you have a line about W. who, thank God, turned out to be well though he had been ill, and had had a worreying summer in various ways. He had also warned us, he said, (wh. was quite true, though we all forgot it) that he might not keep up his regular correspondence during the hot weather. We were all greatly relieved.

      Thanks for your criticisms on P.R. The detailed criticisms (the ‘passages where one word less wd. make all the difference’) are what I should like best and could profit by most. Perhaps when you sent the MS back (there is no special hurry) you wd. mark on the blank opposite pages any bits that you think specially in need of improvement and add a note or two in pencil—but don’t let it be a bother to you. As to your major criticisms

      1. Quotations. I hadn’t realised that they were so numerous as you apparently found them. Mr Sensible, as you rightly saw, is in a separate position: the shower of quotations is part of the character and it wd. be a waste of time to translate them, since the dialogue (I hope) makes it clear that his quotations were always silly and he always missed the point of the authors he quoted. The other ones maybe too numerous, and perhaps can be reduced & translated. But not beyond a certain point: for one of the contentions of the book is that the decay of our old classical learning is a contributary cause of atheism (see the chapter on Ignorantia). The quotations at the beginnings of the Books are of course never looked at at all by most readers, so I don’t think they matter much.