Collected Letters Volume One: Family Letters 1905–1931. Walter Hooper

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СКАЧАТЬ school career has been a failure, he may do better in the future.

Thank you very, very much for your kind suggestion about the present. You are really making too much of this scholarship.⁹ Nevertheless, there is nothing that I should prize more than a nice edition of Kipling, whose poems I am just beginning to read and to wonder why I never read them before–a usual state of mind, in the literary way, for me at Leeborough.

      Today we leave our letters open and the authorities insert a printed notice of the date of breaking up. Its rather singular to notice the familiar landmarks–in a metaphorical sense–that cluster round as we reach the last weeks of the term–and there are only three more now. Nevertheless I hardly watch the flight of time with my usual eagerness. In spite of several rows both fierce and long drawn out, both with masters and boys, I have really been very happy at Cherbourg; and Malvern is unknown ground. More important than this is the fact that we shall see each other again in a short time.

      Looking forward to which, I am,

      your loving

      son Jack.

       TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 45-6):

      Cherbourg.

      Gt. Malvern. 8/7/13.

      My dear Papy,

      I was more pleased than I can say to get your letter. Bad as the news is, it is not the worst, and it is always a relief to have certainty after a prolonged spell of suspense. I am afraid I cannot carry out your suggestion of letting W. speak first: shortly after I wrote my letter to you, I decided to write to him, partly because I hoped for an answer from the College which would naturally reach me before one from Belfast, and I could bear it no longer, partly to cheer W. up since no recriminations can improve the accomplished facts, and partly to settle arrangements about the journey home. In this letter I asked him of course, what exactly had happened, but I have received your answer. You are right in your supposition that I should resent being left in the dark, and I am very thankful that you wrote and told me everything.

      Do not say in a letter that ‘you must stop, or else begin to pour out all your troubles, which would be unfair’. It would not be unfair; it would be wise. For, in the first place you would derive some comfort from the mere action of putting them into words, and, in the second place, I trust that they would be lighter after we had talked them over together in our letters. This small thing, this act of discussing and sympathizing over matters, is all the help I can give you at present, but, such as it is, I give it, as you know, very gladly.

      Perhaps you will be somewhat cheered up by the visit of our Scotch relatives: but to be honest, I have spoken too fiercely and too often against society to endeavour now to preach in its favour.

I was very interested by what you told me about Jordan.¹⁰ Who knows but that I owe more to those early little essays in the old days than you or I imagine? For it is to this uneducated postman that I owe the fact that I was acquainted with the theory of essay writing, in however crude a form, at an age when most boys hardly know the meaning of the word. To him, of course, next to you and to the fact of my being born in a race rich in literary feeling and mastery of their own tongue, and in that atmosphere of culture which has always shrouded the study both at Dundela and Leeborough. Nowhere else have I met that peculiar feeling–that literary ether. Perhaps Archburn would have it were it not for the cats. No school ever had it, and libraries are too public. Thank goodness I shall soon be in it and with you.

      Yet I do not enjoy saying goodbye to Cherbourg: a good many things happy and unhappy have happened there, and I like the place.

      What a curious business about that post card. Thanks for sending it. Its rather alarming to think that our letters can go astray like that.

      your loving

      son Jack.

At the beginning of September Albert Lewis thought of asking his old headmaster at Lurgan College in County Armagh, William T. Kirkpatrick¹¹ (1848-1921) if he would prepare Warnie for the Sandhurst examination. Following his retirement from Lurgan in 1899 Mr Kirkpatrick had moved with his wife to ‘Gastons’, Great Bookham in Surrey, where he usually had one residential pupil each year whom he prepared for university or college examinations. He agreed to tutor Warnie and the latter arrived at Great Bookham on 10 September 1913.

       Jack arrived in Malvern on 18 September to begin his first term as a scholar of Malvern College–or ‘Wyvern’ as he called it in his autobiography. Like Warnie before him, Jack was a member of School House.

       TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 71-2):

      [Malvern College,

      Malvern. 21? September 1913]

      My dear P.,

      I arrived safely as you know by the telegram–reaching Malvern at about half past five. Most of the other new boys had arrived, but one or two didn’t come until the following day. So far everything has been very pleasant indeed.

Luckily I am going to get a study out of which the old occupants are moving today. There will be three other people in it–Hardman,¹² Anderson,¹³ and Lodge.¹⁴ The last of these is an intolerable nuisance, but the Old Boy manages these things and it can’t be helped.

I have seen quite a lot of W’s friend Hichens,¹⁵ who seems frightfully pleased at being head of the house; going about with a huge note book and a blue pencil, taking down quite unneccesary things.

Yesterday we made our first acquaintance of Smugie¹⁶–a queer, but very nice old man who goes on as if taking a form were a social function–‘a quaint old world courtesy’ as you read in some book. There is one other new boy from the School House in the Upper V–Cooper, who is quite all right.¹⁷ We begin ordinary work on Monday.

      Could you please send me some plain socks, black, which are ‘de rigeur’ here. My size is rather uncertain, but get them almost as big as your own, for I have a large foot. I have not heard from W. yet. Hoping you are not ‘thinking long’, I am,

      your loving

      son Jack

       TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 77):

      Malvern.

      28/9/13.

      My dear Papy,

I hope you don’t object to the use of red ink, which is unavoidable, as our study has no black. Thanks very much for the money, note paper and socks. As you advise, I am being careful not to be rooked, and have already refused countless offers of utterly worthless merchandise. I have made the acquaintance of W’s friend Captain Tassell, who is quite an interesting study.¹⁸

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