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

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СКАЧАТЬ reading nothing since Othello but a translation from the Icelandic, and stray articles etc. In Greek we have begun Demosthenes. Of course oratory is not a sort of literature that I appreciate or understand in any language, so that I am hardly qualified to express an opinion on our friend with the mouthful of pebbles. However, compared with Cicero, he strikes me as a man with something to say, intent only upon saying it clearly and shortly. One misses the beautiful roll of the Ciceronian period, but on the other hand, he is not such a—blether.⁷⁷

      Do try and write soon, or, if the worst comes to the worst, get Aunt Annie to do so.

      your loving,

      son,

      Jack

       TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W/LP IV: 299-300):

      [Gastons

      24 July 1915]

      Dear Galahad,

      I have debated more than once as to whether you would prefer a tired and perfunctory letter written in good time during the week, or a fresh and willing [one] a few days late on Saturday evening. Thinking that you would choose the latter, and knowing I would–here we are.

What on earth are you doing reading the Sowers?⁷⁸ A Russian mystery-story full of wise diplomatists and impossible women–it ought to be clad in a bright red cover, with a crude picture of Steinmitz saying ‘The Moscow Doctor–and your prince!!!’ from the head of the stairs, and set on a railway bookstall. But, perhaps I am wrong. Of course it has points, but you are worthy of better things. Never read any George Eliot⁷⁹ Myself, being no great hand at novels but admire your energy in that line.

Talking about books, I am determined to teach you to like poetry, and will begin next hols. on Coleridges ‘Christabel’. Don’t be put off by the name. It is exactly the sort of romantic strangeness and dreaminess you & I like, a sort of partner to the Ancient Mariner,⁸⁰ as Danse Macabre is to the March of the Dwarfs.

      Also–I hope all these schemes aren’t boring you–you are going to help me to improve my drawing next hols. Figures I can do tolerably, but from you I must learn the technique of the game–shading, curves, how to do a background without swamping the figures etc. Of course this will all be in pen and ink which is the best medium for my kind of work–I can imagine your smile at my calling such scribbles ‘work’, but no matter. I am longing to get home again now, and expect I shall arrive next Saturday.

Yes Mrs K. has played the Polonaise; we found the right one without difficulty, and tho’ she made some remarks about the hardness of it I at length persuaded her. Now, you know, I never flatter: so you may take it as solemn truth when I tell you that, if I admired your playing before, I understood its true value far better when I compared [it] with Mrs K.–by no means a contemptible craftsman. To hear the lovely galloping passages rendered correctly, even well, but without your own frank enjoyment of the work, your sympathy with the composer and your inimitable fire and abandonment (this sounds like an essay but I mean every word of it), was a revelation. You threw yourself into it, and forgot yourself in the composer: Mrs K sat there, amiable, complacent and correct, as if she were pouring out tea. Now, while they’re not all as bad as she, still you alone of the people I have heard play set to the matter properly. And for that reason, a piece, by you, if it were full of mistakes (tho’ of course it wouldn’t be) would be better than the same piece faultlessly played by–say, Hope Harding.⁸¹ This is a rare gift of yours: you should yet do great things with it: you are a fool if you don’t cultivate it. Perhaps, because you paint and read as well as play, you realize the imagination of a composer’s mind perfectly, and can always bring out to a sensible (in the old sense of the word) listener anything at all that there is in the notes. Of course, all this is the praise of an amateur: but the praise of an honest amateur who has a genuine, tho’ non-techniqual taste for music, is worth something at least.

I agree with you that the music of Lohengrin, so far as I know it is delightful: nor do I see what is wrong with the story, tho’ of course the splendid wildness of the ‘Ring’⁸² must be lacking. On the whole, however, I am not sure that any music from it I know, is not perhaps cast in a lower mould than ‘Parsifal’⁸³ & the ‘Ring’. Although, indeed the prelude–which you wouldn’t listen to when I played it–is quite as fine I think as that from ‘Parsifal’.

What is your opinion of W. Jaffe–little Vee-Lee?⁸⁴ He did one thing for which he can never be forgiven–dropping in and staying till eleven on the first night of my brother’s leave. The Hamiltons came over on another, so we had only one evening alone together in peace and comfort. On the whole, tho’, he is a decent crittur, I suppose. Have you ever heard their gramaphone? I wonder what its like.

Which reminds me, did you hear the new Glenmachen record–a solo by the Russian base–Chaliapin⁸⁵ from ‘Robert Le Diable’.⁸⁶ The orchestration is absolutely magnificent and the singing as good. I only wish I could afford ‘the like of them’, don’t you?

      I shan’t write again this term now–jolly glad it’s so near the end.

      Yours

      Jack

       TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 9):

      [Gastons]

      Moon Day. A good codotta that.) 28 July 1915]

      My dear Papy,

I was very glad to get both your letters, and sorry if I worried you at a busy moment. Willie’s absence must be a great discomfort, and of course I shall understand if letters are short or overdue just at present. No. A registered letter is no equivalent to ‘speaking sharply’ to one, and I am therefore in no need to the German gentleman’s remorse–or ‘again-bite’ to be Teutonic. But at sixteen we will do much for excitement, a new experience. ‘What’ said I to myself ‘tho’ the shades of Plato and Sophocles wait upon my pleasure, the treasures of Rome, the brilliance of France, the knowledge of Germany attend my nod? I am out of the world here. While the great war of all histories, nations and languages is waged hard by, shall I remain like a dormouse, inactive, apathetic. A thousand times no’, (as a friend of yours in Punch said on a memorable occasion), ‘I will have excitement I will taste of new experiences, soul-stirring adventures’–and gripping my hat with a cry of ‘D’audace et toujours d’audace’⁸⁷ I rushed out into the night and–sent a registered letter!

      I don’t know that there is any news here: that Macmullen girl, the theatrical lady, is staying here just at present. The summer here is one of the worst Kirk remembers, being very wet and making a special point of raining whenever the poor people are trying to mow or make hay. Fortunately the amount of corn we grow at home is insignificant as regards the country’s needs. All the same, at a time like the present every little counts, and if this sort of thing is going on all over England it is rather a pity.

      (Later СКАЧАТЬ