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

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СКАЧАТЬ One of those written during this holiday was ‘The Hills of Down, and it is found in his Collected Poems (1994). From this time until he went up to Oxford in 1917 Lewis wrote 52 poems which he copied into a notebook bearing the name ‘Metrical Meditations of a Cod’. Fourteen of the ‘metrical meditations’ are found in Spirits in Bondage.

       TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

      [Gastons

      4 May 1915]

Dear Galahad,³²

I am surprised! Have you actually come down to enjoying such stuff as ‘The Breed of the Treshams’?³³ I never (for which the gods be thanked) saw or read it, but the name is enough. I admit, I should like to have seen The Shrew,³⁴ and novelties in the way of staging are always rather interesting. I much prefer on the stage–and everywhere for that matter–quiet, tasteful, plain decorations, to tawdry, splendid things.

I feel my fame as a ‘Man-about-the-Gramaphone’ greatly put out by your remarks à propos of Lohengrin Prelude Act III,³⁵ as, I must confess, I never heard of it on Columbia. I do hope it is a good record, as I should like to have it very much: what is the Venusbury music like?³⁶ Is it that wild part that comes at the end of the Tannhaüser overture? Of course you know the Columbia edition of Schubert’s Rosamunde³⁷ has long been at Little Lea, but when last I played it to you, I seem to remember a non favourable verdict from you. I am so glad that you have gotten (That’s correct, you know. ‘Got’ isn’t) the Fire Music,³⁸ as I have been hesitating over it for ages, and your success or failure will decide me. Oh! I had better stop writing about this, as it makes me ‘think long’: not, if you please, in a sentimental way, but with a sensible desire for my books and you and our Gramaphones etc.³⁹

      However, I have gotten (notice–again) one great addition to my comfort here, in the discovery of a ‘Soaking-machine’, which conveniences are very scarce in England, owing to the strict customs which prevent the mildest trespassing. My new palace, is at the foot of a great oak, a few yards off a lane, and hidden therefrom by a little row of shrubs and small trees. Completely private, safe from sun, wind or rain, and on the ridge of the only rising ground (you wouldn’t call it a hill) about here. There, with a note book and pencil, I can be as free to write, etc, as at home. So if your next letter comes in pencil, on a sheet torn from a pocket book, you needn’t be surprised. I must find some more of these places as summer goes on, for it is already too hot to walk far.

I bought yesterday a little shilling book about Wm. Morris, his life and his work,⁴⁰ which is rather interesting. To me, at least, for I am afraid you have given up that old friend of ours.

To say that you have something ‘sentimental’ to say, and not to say it, is to be like Janie McN.⁴¹ with the latest scandal, that everyone is told about and no one is told. I don’t quite follow your letter in places. What is the connection between all the rubbish about ‘that nuiscance Arthur’ (you know how all your friends ridicule and dislike that sort of talk) and the wish that I should become sentimental perforce? By the way, I am perhaps more sentimental than you, but I don’t blow a trumpet about it. Indeed, I am rather ashamed of it. Feelings ought to be kept for literature and art, where they are delightful and not intruded into life where they are merely a nuiscance.

I have just finished ‘Shirley’; which I think better than either ‘Jane Eyre’⁴² or ‘Villette’. You must read it. What a letter; every sentence seems to begin ‘I’. However, a good healthy dose of egotism is what you need, while you might pass on a little of your superfluous modesty to Bookham. Sorry you’ve returned the old Meistersingers,⁴³ but think the Beka better value.

      Yours

      Jack

      

P.S. What is the name of the ‘Galloping Horse’ piece by Chopin,⁴⁴ I want to make Mrs K. play it.

       TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W/LP IV: 316-17):

      [Gastons

      11 May 1915]

      Dear Galahad,

      Tut! Tut! Must I change your soubriquet? From being the spotless knight of the Grail, are you going to turn philosopher and meet me on my own ground to dispute my shadowy quibbles about the proper sphere of sentiment? Galahad becomes Merlin: who knows but that you may ‘grow besotted of a damosel’, like him, and like him, I may find you when I come home bound fast under a great stone, making a piteous wail to all who pass. And what a relief for the neighbourhood! I think I shall nominate a suitable damosel–say Miss Bradley or Sal Stokes–to besott and bind you. By the way, à propos of Miss Bradley, has she yet recovered (or better still died) from that peculiarly interminable complaint of hers, which prevents the gramaphone being played up at Glenmachen?

      But to go back to the sentiment controversy, your objection is nonsense. You argue that sentiment is delightful in art, because it is a part of human nature. Quite right. From that, you deduce that it ought not to be confined to that sphere of human nature where it is delightful–viz. art. That is almost as sensible as to say that trousers are delightful only because they are a part of human clothes: therefore they ought to be worn, not only on the legs, but every where else. Do you maintain that it is a highly commendable and philosophical act to wear trousers, say, on your head? My point is that art is a recepticacle of human thought: sentiment, emotion etc make up that section of human thought which are best suited to fill that definite receptical–and no other. For why, when we have found the best place to keep a thing, should we keep it in other places as well, or instead? By the analogy of the trousers I have shown how ridiculous that would be. As for your idea that to be young, one must be sentimental, let us go into it. Young children are practically devoid of sentiment: they are moved only by bodily pain: young men are a little more sentimental, middle aged ones considerably more so, and old ones the most mawkishly so of all. Sentiment, you see, is a distinct mark of age.

Ah! Having gotten (N.B.) that off our chest, we can proceed to other matters. That little book about Wm. Morris has interested me so much–or re-awakened the old interest–in him, that I have just written up for ‘The Roots of the Mountains’ in Longman’s pocket edition:⁴⁵ it is about the Goths, and is praised in that book as one of the best of the prose Romances. What is the good of getting Anderson in Everyman?⁴⁶ It is true, the tales have considerable merit in ipso (that’s Latin and means ‘in themselves’, Ignorant!): but yet, if any book ever needed or was greatly improved by fancy binding, that is it.

      The word Soaking-Machine can hardly be styled ‘slang’, being, as it is, coined by myself for private circulation: СКАЧАТЬ