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

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      Jack

      P.S. Minto says I must have left a suit of pyjamas at Bernagh, and I seem to remember your saying something about it (wh. I didn’t heed) in a previous letter. If so ‘woooo-d’ you please send them. Really Arthur, I am awfully sorry, honestly, really Yrs J.

      P.P.S. I chust wanted to say, Arthur, how very sorry I am.

       On 17 November 1931, Warnie arrived in Shanghai where he was to serve as the officer commanding the Royal Army Service Corps. He had been here in 1927–9 as officer in command of the Supply Depot. He wrote in his diary on 23 November:

I almost feel as I had never left Shanghai, a feeling accentuated by the fact that I have bought back from Bill Wilson the identical pieces of furniture which I sold him when I went home. I am writing this at the same old desk, and in front of me are my own old curtains and mosquito windows…Now that I have got my pictures up, and bought a $30 Japanese rush carpet, unpacked all my books and the gramophone, I feel I can sit back and breathe. ⁴³

       TO HIS BROTHER (W):

      [The Kilns]

      Nov. 22nd 1931

      My dear W,

I really think your recent editorial difficulties have impressed upon me the habit of dating my letters!⁴⁴ And talking of the Lewis papers, I looked into the editorial drawer the other day and made a correction, by adding to your note ‘Grace by A.J.L.’ the words ‘On the contrary, traditional Latin Grace translated by C.S.L.’ Such are the traps into which even a careful editor falls.

I am sorry I have not been able to write for some weeks. During the week it is out of the question. My ordinary day is as follows. Called (with tea) 7.15. After bath and shave I usually have time for a dozen paces or so in Addison’s walk⁴⁵ (at this time of year my stroll exactly hits the sunrise) before chapel at 8. ‘Dean’s Prayers’—which I have before described to you—lasts about quarter of an hour. I then breakfast in common room with the Dean’s Prayers party (i.e. Adam Fox,⁴⁶ the chaplain, Benecke⁴⁷ and Christie) which is joined punctually by J. A. Smith⁴⁸ at about 8.25. I have usually left the room at about 8.40, and then saunter, go to the stool, answer notes etc till 9. From 9 till 1 is all pupils—an unconscionable long stretch for a man to act the gramaphone in. At one Lyddiatt⁴⁹ or Maureen is waiting for me with the car and I am carried home.

      My afternoons you know. Almost every afternoon as I set out hillwards with my spade, this place gives me all the thrill of novelty. The scurry of the waterfowl as you pass the pond, and the rich smell of autumnal litter as you leave the drive and strike into the little path, are always just as good as new. At 4.45 I am usually driven into College again, to be a gramaphone for two more hours, 5 till 7. At 7.15 comes dinner.

On Tuesday, which is my really shocking day, pupils come to me to read Beowulf at 8.30 and usually stay till about 11, so that when they have gone and I have glanced round the empty glasses and coffee cups and the chairs in the wrong places, I am glad enough to crawl to bed. Other standing engagements are on Thursday when a man called Horwood⁵⁰ (another English don) comes and reads Dante with me, every second Monday when the College literary society meets. When you have thrown in the usual irregular dinner engagements you will see that I am lucky when I have two evenings free after dinner.

The only exception to this programme (except of course Saturday when I have no pupils after tea) is Monday when I have no pupils at all. I have to employ a good deal of it in correcting transcripts done by B. Litt. pupils, and other odd jobs. It has also become a regular custom that Tolkien⁵¹ should drop in on me of a Monday morning and drink a glass. This is one of the pleasantest spots in the week. Sometimes we talk English school politics: sometimes we criticise one another’s poems: other days we drift into theology or ‘the state of the nation’: rarely we fly no higher than bawdy and ‘puns’.

What began as an excuse for not writing has developed into a typical diary or hebdomadal compendium. As to the last two week ends, they have both been occupied. The one before last I went to spend a night at Reading with a man called Hugo Dyson⁵²—now that I come to think of it, you heard all about him before you left. We had a grand evening. Rare luck to stay with a friend whose wife is so nice that one almost (I can’t say quite) almost regrets the change when he takes you up to his study for serious smoking and for the real midnight talking. You would enjoy Dyson very much for his special period is the late 17th century: he was much intrigued by your library when he was last in our room. He is a most fastidious bookman and made me (that same occasion) take out one of the big folios from the bottom shelf of the Leeboro bookcase because they were too tightly packed. He disapproved strongly of the method (wh. I confess I had always followed) of taking books out of the shelf by putting a finger at the top so—and adopts a different one: which you will find described in ‘Portrait of a Scholar’ in that book of essays you took away with you.⁵³

      At the same time he is as far from being a dilettante as anyone can be: a burly man, both in mind and body, with the stamp of the war on him, which begins to be a pleasing rarity, at any rate in civilian life. Lest anything should be lacking, he is a Christian and a lover of cats. The Dyson cat is called Mirralls, and is a Viscount. That accounts for one week end.

Last Saturday Barfield came down. He arrived unexpectedly for lunch in College—Saturday being my day for a rotatory lunch with Keir⁵⁴ and Lawson.⁵⁵ As it happened, Keir didn’t turn up, and the bore Lawson was neither here nor there. Barfield remarked afterwards that he went away feeling that Lawson had contributed most valuably to the conversation, though when he came to think it over he could not remember his having made a single rational remark. You know the type—the man who has an air of saying something interesting, which often carries you away.

Barfield and I then motored to the Kilns, took our packs (or rather your pack and mine) and set out to walk to the Barley Mow.⁵⁶ We failed to get any four o’clock [tea] at Marsh Baldon, but being both tired of work, and badly in need of a jaunt, we were too delighted to find ourselves on the road again and in each other’s company, to be dampened even by that. It was dark before we reached the B.M., and after a noble supper of ham and eggs and a little yawning at the fire in that panelled room (shared with the same couple whom you and I saw there) we went to bed. We lay in one room, mighty snug, and had a good deal of talk before it drifted off into prodigious yawns. We didn’t stir till about 9 the Sunday morning, he being delighted with the unaccustomed absence of a restless child (how do married men live?) and I glad enough not to have chapel at 8.

      That day we walked up Didcot Clumps (Sinodun Hills? Wittenham Clumps?) and crossed the Thames, not at Shillingford but at a ferry near Shillingford. As we reached the bank a torrent of dogs and one cat СКАЧАТЬ