Collected Letters Volume Two: Books, Broadcasts and War, 1931–1949. Walter Hooper

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СКАЧАТЬ They realise one’s idea of mountains as the fastnesses of the giants. The actual beach of Loch Lomond also pleased me very much—an ordinary pebbly beach such as you might find at the sea with the unusual addition that it had trees on it and that you could drink the water. Up in the mountains we had a glorious hour at a stream—a golden brown stream, with cataracts and deep pools. We spread out all our clothes (sweat-sodden) to dry on the flat stones, and lay down in a pool just under a little waterfall, and let the foam come down the back of our heads and round our necks. Then when we were cool, we came out and sat naked to eat our sandwiches, with our feet still in the rushing water. Why have you and I never done this? (Answer—because we never came to a suitable stream at a suitable time)

This glorious day was followed by a very tiring and trying, but extremely interesting, week end chez l’oncle at Helensburgh. It was uncannily like being at home again—specially when Uncle Bill announced on the Sunday evening ‘I won’t be going into town tomorrow’, and we with well-feigned enthusiasm replied ‘Good!’. But to describe the whole thing would take a book. On the Monday afternoon⁴⁵ we sailed from Glasgow. The journey down the Clyde was beautiful, despite some rain, and tho’ there were more passengers on board than I would have chosen, there was usually a quiet corner to read in. I liked—you would probably not—the homely feeling on these boats, with dinner at 1 and ‘High Tea’ at 6. It was very strange coming into Belfast next morning.

I had made up my mind that it was no good trying to arrange a meeting with you. The time—we were sailing again at one o’clock—was much too long for a three-handed talk of you and W. and me, and too short for sending him off anywhere so that I could have you tete-à-tete. Our programme was simple. We trammed to Campbell and thence walked up the hills round the Shepherd’s hut. The sight of all those woods and fields made me regret very much that I was not having an Irish holiday with you: and the new house (near Kelsie’s new house) made me wonder how much more might be altered by next year. We walked down by the ordinary, poignantly familiar, route, stopped to look at Leeborough—how the trees are growing!—and then went down the Circular Rd. to St Marks to see the window which W. had never yet seen.⁴⁶ He was delighted with it. Here we had a conversation with the verger—who referred to Gordon⁴⁷ as ‘Gordon’! Then, after a drink in the reformed pub at Gelson’s corner, we got back into town.

      The rest of the tour I shall not describe in detail. The bit I should most like to have shared with you was the departure from Waterford. The sail down the river, peppered with v. early Norman castles, was good, but what was better was the next three hours out to sea. Imagine a flat French grey sea, and a sky of almost the same colour: between these a long fish-shaped streak of pure crimson, about 20 miles long, and lasting, unchanged or changing imperceptibly, for hours. Then add three or four perfectly transparent mountains, so extraordinarily spiritualised that they absolutely realised the old idea of Ireland as the ‘isle of the saints’. Like this—I do not remember that I have ever seen anything more calm and spacious and celestial. Not but what we had some wonderful sunsets at other times in the voyage. You with your dislike of the sea will hardly admit it, but from a boat out of sight of land one does get effects hardly to be got elsewhere. For one thing the sky is so huge and the horizon is uninterrupted in every direction, so that the mere scale of the sky-scenery is beyond anything you get ashore: and for another, the extreme simplicity of the design—flat disk and arched dome and nothing else—produces a kind of concentration. And then again to turn suddenly from these huge sublimities as one passes a staircase head and hear the sound of plates being laid or the laugh of a boy coming up on the warmer air from below, gives that delicious contrast of the homely and familiar in the midst of the remote, which is the master-stroke of the whole thing.

I am re-reading Malory, and am astonished to find how much more connected, more of a unity, it is man we used to see. I no longer lose myself in the ‘brasting’. There is still too much of it, to be sure, but I am sustained by the beauty of the sentiment, and also the actual turns of phrase. How could one miss ‘He commanded his trumpets to blow that all the earth trembled and dindled of the sound.’⁴⁸ Clearly one must read every good book at least once every ten years. It now seems to me that my Bookham reading of Malory was almost worthless. Did you ever realise that it is full of pathos? I never did until a pupil pointed it out to me a few months ago—wh. is what set me re-reading it.

      I hope I shall be able to be a fairly regular correspondent again for the rest of the summer. Bad luck about the book!

      Yours,

      Jack

       TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

      [The Kilns]

      Sept 1st. 1933

      My dear Arthur,

      I have no right to complain that I have not yet heard from you. Nor have I much to say on my own account: but I think I will write a little just to feel that we are keeping the channel open.

      W. and I are heartily sick of the summer, the others not. The pond is sinking lower and lower and all sorts of stones and roots that ought to be covered are projecting—it seems almost an indecency. The water is getting dirtier and warmer and bathing has been abandoned. Flowers and vegetables are withering and the ground is so hard that a short walk leaves you footsore as if you had been walking on pavements. This morning we woke to coolness and thick mist and spangled cobwebs. I thought it was the first day of autumn and felt the old excitement. But it was all a cheat and by the time we came out of church it was another blazing day—pitiless blue sky, sun hammering bleached white grass, wasps buzzing, dragon flies darting, and Mr Papworth panting in the shade with his tongue out.

      Which reminds me—I am so sorry to hear about your Paddy. I couldn’t lay my hands on your letter when I was writing last—I knew there was something in it I hadn’t dealt with but couldn’t remember what. How heartless you must have thought me. I now have your letter and can fully sympathise. It is always hard luck when you feel that other people have hidden facts from you till it is too late. I don’t now agree—how heartily I once would have—with any idea of ‘trying to forget’ things and people we have lost, or indeed with trying always and on principle to exclude any kind of distressing thought from one’s mind. I don’t mean one ought to sentimentalize a sorrow, or (often) scratch a shame till it is raw. But I had better not go on with the subject as I find my ideas are all in disorder. I know I feel very strongly that when in a wakeful night some idea which one ‘can’t stand’—some painful memory or mean act of ones own or vivid image of physical pain—thrusts itself upon you, that you ought not to thrust it away but look it squarely in the face for some appreciable time: giving it of course an explicitly devotional context. But I don’t fully know why and am not prepared to work the thing out. Anyway, this only very faintly arises out of what you said—and it won’t bring the poor beast back to life!

I have just re-read Lilith⁴⁹ and am much clearer about the meaning. The first thing to get out of the way is all Greville Macdonald’s nonsense about ‘dimensions’ and ‘elements’—if you have his preface in your edition.⁵⁰ That is just the sort of mechanical ‘mysticism’ which is worlds away from Geo. Macdonald. The main lesson of the book is against secular philanthropy—against the belief that you can effectively obey the 2nd command about loving your neighbour without first trying to love God.

      The story runs like this. The human soul exploring its own house (the Mind) finds itself on the verge of unexpected worlds which at first СКАЧАТЬ