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

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СКАЧАТЬ from term to holidays and vice versa brings, is the ability to settle down at once. I feel now as if I had been here for several months and have quite got into the old routine again. Everything at Bookham is of course in statu quo–I believe it would still be a hundred years hence. It is beautiful spring weather, as it was at home when I left you, and if only one could have that matutinal cup of tea, life would have nothing more to offer.

I spent the afternoon last Saturday in town, at the Shaftesbury, where there was a matinée of Carmen:¹ the singing was very poor, especially our friend the bass, whose rendition–I fancy that is the correct term–of the Toreador song was a thing to make the angels weep. Carmen herself however was quite good, and the tenor tolerable, so that on the whole I might have fared worse. With the opera itself, apart from the performance, I was very pleased. Just about the right percentage of the tunes was (it ought to be ‘was’ not ‘were’ oughtn’t it?) familiar to me, and the ones which I had not heard before ‘discoveries’.

This afternoon I have been a long walk to a perfectly delightful village² that I had never found out before, and I wish you could see it. It is rather like some of the places described in the ‘Upton Letters’ only more so. One old house–a thing as thick as a cottage and a good deal longer than Leeborough, all built on different levels, bears the legend ‘1666’. The best things however are the dragons and other monsters on the roof. Another most excellent codotta is the White Horse where you can drink tea, and a parlour that was used in the coaching days, and has not, by the look of it, been furnished since. If only they would dust the butter it would be quite ideal.

      The ‘Faerie Queen’ which I told Mullens to send here as soon as it came has now arrived, and I am very pleased with it. If a bill comes from Osbornes for those records, please send it on at once as I have a cheque of W’s. made out (or whatever the phrase is) to T.E. Osborne to pay it withal. However, no bill ought to arrive as I am asking Arthur to tell the ‘young person’ to send it here. And by the by, talking about cheques, I am not sure whether I asked you to take the cheque out of my cash box in the little end room and turn it into money some time before next holidays. Would you please do this? Hoping you are carrying on all right.

      your loving

      son Jack

       TO ARTHUR GREEVES (LP V: 50-1):

      [Gastons

      1 February 1916]

      Dear little Archie,

Oh Gods of friendship, has such devotion ever been witnessed as mine! I am just at the beginning of a heavenly new book, I am just at the end of a long day’s work, and yet I spend my spare time in writing letters. I hope you duly appreciate the sacrifice of a fresh young heart offered up on the savage altar of³–well to get on.

On the Saturday⁴ in London I wasted 7/6 on going to a matinee of Carmen. There was no one in the cast of whom I had heard before and no one whom I want to hear again. Carmen herself was tolerable, but the rest, especially the Toreador, were fiendish. With the opera too I was awfully disappointed, although there is certainly a lot of beautiful music in it–particularly in the preludes to the acts (oh, one thing was good–the orchestra: they played that intermezzo that I have exquisitely) and in the scene among the mountains. But one does get so sick of all the tedious melodrama, all the blustering orchestration, and sticky tunes of good old fashioned operas. Then too there are a pair of villains in it who have a ghastly resemblance in their clownings to that other pair in Fra Diavolo–do you remember those awful creatures? So on the whole I was very fed up with this world by the time I reached dear Bookham. I find–of course–my beloved fellow pupil.

      Since then I have been cheered up by the arrival of my new ‘Faerie Queen’ in the red leather Everyman. I can’t see why you so dislike this edition: and if you have noticed the effect that their backs have when two or three are together in a shelf I am sure you do really appreciate them. I have read a good chunk of this and have also re-read Jane Eyre from beginning to end–it is a magnificent novel. Some of those long, long dialogues between her and Rochester are really like duets from a splendid opera, aren’t they? And do you remember the description of the night she slept on the moor and of the dawn? You really lose a lot by never reading books again.

The other book–which I am denying myself to write to YOU, yes YOU of all people–is from the library by Blackwood called ‘Uncle Paul’.⁵ Oh, I have never read anything like it, except perhaps the ‘Lore of Proserpine’. When you have got it out of your library and read how Nixie and Uncle Paul get into a dream together and went to a primaeval forest at dawn to ‘see the winds awake’ and how they went to the ‘Crack between yesterday and tomorrow’⁶ you will agree with me.

It was most annoying not getting my new records before I came back, wasn’t it? Tell the girlinosbornes–the next time you go to see Olive–to send the bill for them to my address here at once. I do hope my Caruso⁷ ‘E lucevan e stella’⁸ is going to be a success. Talking about that thing, does it convey anything to you? To me it seems to be just abstract melody. The actual scene I believe is a man on the battlement of a castle writing a letter–but you have probably read Tosca in that beastly potted opera book.

I was interested in what you said about the ‘Brut’.⁹ You ought to get it in Everyman.

      Yours

      Jack

       TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 51-2):

      [Gastons

      6? February 1916]

      My dear Papy,

      Thanks very much for the cheque, which I enclose, signed as you told me. I am afraid however that I must trouble you again: one of my pairs of shoes has finally given out ‘beyond the hope of uttermost recall’ and I want you please to get me a new pair, or else tell Annie to do so. The mysterious piece of paper which I am sending is a map of my foot so that the knave in the shop will know what size to give you. I am very sorry if this is a nuisance, and will take care next term to set out well equipped with hats, coats, shoes and other garments, like the men in the furnace.

That business about Warnie’s commission, though of course important in itself, is as you say a nice example of war office methods. If big things are managed in the same way as these small ones, it promises well for the success of the war doesn’t it? Another thing also struck me: we have often wondered and laughed at some of the people who have commissions. It becomes even funnier when one reads the formula, ‘reposing special trust and confidence in your loyalty, courage, and good conduct’: we remember that the Jarvey¹⁰ who drove the Colonel up to the office last time was one of those who hoped soon to enjoy this ‘special trust and confidence.’

By the way, you should get that ‘Spirit of Man’, Bridge’s anthology,¹¹ that everyone is talking about. Mrs. K. has it from the library at present: it is one of the prettiest little books I have seen for СКАЧАТЬ