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

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СКАЧАТЬ to write. As you say, I have a lot of things to talk about and the first is Smugy’s half term report.

      I must confess that I was very disappointed in it. But I should have expected it all. For, the fact of the matter is about this Greek Grammar, that I know very little indeed: and the consequence of this is that what the rest of the form are running over in a sort of casual way for the third or fourth time, I am often learning for the first time in my life. This of course makes it rather difficult to keep up with the running. Then again, there are a lot of points of Greek grammar which I learnt up in furious haste at Cherbourg in the last few moments before the exam–and of course forgot again. These have to be faced with a half knowledge which is worse than ignorance, because it only muddles one’s brain. But all these things should come right in time; as I flatter myself I am not cursed with ‘an inability to grasp the elements’ of any reasonable subject. As for the place in form, I was prepared for it to be poor, as the general standard of the form is rather beyond me–seeing that with the exception of the other scholars it consists of people who have filtered through to Smugy’s care just at the end of their Malvern career. However, I get on well with Smugy and really that is half the battle.

      You need not have been so worried about my temporary indisposition. It is only one of those trifling, although irritating chills to which I am subject in the winter months. Anyway, the worst of it is over now, as I am up in my room at the San. today. The San. is about the most curious place I have ever been in. I arrived here a week ago on Friday and was placed in a bed in a large and many windowed apartment, in one corner of which a fire was cheerfully engaged in belching forth dense clouds of smoke, which rendered it well nigh impossible to see or breathe. Conquering a natural terror of at once becoming unconscious in such an atmosphere, I resigned my self to sleep that night–but not for long. I soon discovered to my cost that the room in which I had been deposited was directly over the kitchen. I was apprised of this fact by the musical efforts of the domestic staff, whose vigorous and unwholesome concert was prolonged far into the night. But the funniest thing about this place is the noises that one hears in the morning. I really cannot imagine what the staff do. Judging from the loud peals of laughter and the metallic clangs which strike my ears before breakfast daily, they engage in hand to hand combat with the fire irons.

      After a short period of the smoky room I was removed to a smaller but much more comfortable chamber where I still remain. Here my only trouble is the determined ‘quacking’ of a body of geese imprisoned somewhere in the neighbourhood.

As for your kind enquiries about the approaching natal gift, I have made up my mind that I should like ‘The Rhinegold and the Valkyries’ to match the ‘Siegfried and Twilight of the Gods’ which I have got.³⁸ I think however that the purchase of the book had better be deferred until Xmas when I can talk to my friend Carson in person.

      I am glad to hear that W. is coming down at the end of the term as it is nicer travelling ‘in comp.’ than alone. I must stop now. How are you yourself keeping these days?

      your loving

      son,

      Jack.

       TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 108-9):

      The Sanatorium,

      Thursday or Friday.

      (I am not quite sure what

      day it is today)

      Postmark: 28 November 1913

      My dear Papy,

      I have advanced yet another stage and am now enjoying the priveledge of being downstairs in the San. That is, instead of sitting up in my bedroom, I have been moved to a sitting room where I can look out upon the hideously ugly garden of the San. And yet there is a homely touch about this garden. It is full of laurels that will never grow because of the wind: we’ve seen these before haven’t we?

      I have been condemned by the school doctor, as soon as I go back, to join the ranks of people who do ‘special exercises for delicate chests’ in the gym. This is a piece of ‘sconce’ after your own heart, and I have no doubt that you will be more pleased to hear about it than I was. Your remarks about the sealskin etc. strike me as being both in questionable taste and the products of a fevered imagination rather than of a sane mind. But still, the human mind is so constituted that the bizarre must ever appeal more potently than the normal. Which is a consolation.

      Congratulations on your victory at the Pattersonian musical festival. You’ll be becoming quite a noted Strandtown diner out if you are not careful.

Talking about social functions reminds me of some wild fantastic talk of another dance this year.³⁹ Don’t let us spoil the Xmas holidays by a chore as colossal as it is disagreeable, and as disagreeable as it is unnecessary. No one else gives a dance on two consecutive years. Nip this matter in the bud ‘which has a bitter taste’ and of which ‘sweet will not be the flower’. (Do you remember the quotation?) But seriously, I hope no such folly is really toward. It is quite bad enough having to attend the functions of others without adding to the nuisance ourselves. Please convey to Aunt Annie and the other conspirators that you are determined not to hear of it, as I am sure you are. For one thing it is a considerable and uncalled for expense, and an expense of the most annoying kind–namely where you get absolutely no return for your money: unless you derive any great pleasure from hovering about among the noisy and objectionable throng who have invaded the pristine seclusion of Leeborough. But I don’t fancy that you do. I am certain that I don’t.

      One good thing is that there are only three more weeks or so this term. I suppose W. will have both tickets when it comes to travelling. Is it next Tuesday or the Tuesday after that his exam comes off?

      As to your remarks about the school san., in spite of smoky chimneys and a villainous domestic staff, there are a good many worse places to spend a few weeks of a long winter term. There are plenty of books and fires, and I always derive a certain savage pleasure in sitting with my feet on the fender, watching through the window a body of my unfortunate fellow beings setting off for a run across that cold, dismal golf links that always reminds me of the moorland in ‘Locksley Hall’.

Talking about ‘Locksley Hall’, I have discovered a tattered copy of Tennyson’s works here, buried among the sixpenny novels and illustrated weeklies, with which I have spent a few enjoyable afternoons reading ‘In memoriam’⁴⁰ and some other things that one ought to know.

      your loving

      son Jack.

       TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 111):

      The Sanatorium,

      St. Andrew’s Rd., Sunday. Postmark: 30 November 1913

      My dear P.,

      I am now I think really quite better and shall be leaving the San. in a few days. It is funny, isn’t it, how soon you get accustomed to a new kind of life? I’ve been down here for a fortnight or so, and I have grown so used to it that I could almost believe that Malvern never existed. But I shall be amply reminded of its life shortly. I am beginning to go out now on those intensely dull convalescent walks–progressing at two miles an hour, muffled up like an arctic explorer, and getting in the bits of sunshine. Thanks very much for the postal order which arrived yesterday. One good thing about being down at the san. is that it prevents your spending money, which is always an advantage.

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