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

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СКАЧАТЬ of form was to carry a little further what you already feel in prose–that is how some phrases such as the Wall of the World, or at the Back of the North Wind affect you, partly by sound partly by association, more than the same meaning would if otherwise expressed. The only difference is that poetry makes use of that sort of feeling much more than prose and produces those effects by metre as well as by phrase. In fact, the metre and the magic of the words should be like the orchestration of a Wagnerian opera–should sort of fill the matter by expressing things that can’t be directly told–that is, it expresses feeling while the matter expresses thought. But I daresay I have given you my views on the subject before. I am very flattered that you remember that old line about the ‘garden where the west wind’ all these months, and will certainly copy out anything that is worth it if you can find me a shop in dear Belfast where I can buy a decent MS book: I have failed in that endeavour so far.

      So we are to be treated to more and more modesty? Indeed Arthur if I could get a little of your diffidence, and you a little of my conceit we should both be very fine fellows. This week’s instalment is quite worthy of the other two, and I was quite disappointed when it broke off. The reeds ‘frightened out of their senses’ and shouting in ‘their loudest whisper’ are delightful. ‘Our Lady of the Leaf might be kept in mind as a possible title if you don’t care for the present one.

      You are rather naive in telling me that you ‘have to sit for a minute thinking’ and ‘find the same word coming in again’ as if these weren’t the common experiences of everyone who has ever written. I haven’t noticed any smallness in the vocabulary you employ for your tale, and anyway that’s just a matter of practice. By the way, even if you didn’t mean it, I hope you see now what I am driving at about the remark of Dennis as to his clothes. As to the ‘sitting for ten minutes’, I don’t believe that good work is ever done in a hurry: even if one does write quickly in a burst of good form, it always has to be tamed down afterwards. I usually make up my instalment in my head on a walk because I find that my imagination only works when I am exercising.

Can you guess what I have been reading this week? Of all things in the world ‘Pendennis’!¹⁰⁹ Isn’t this the one you find too much for you? I am nearly through the first volume and like it well so far: of course one gets rather sick of Pen’s everlasting misbehaviour and the inevitable repentance going round and round like a mill wheel and there doesn’t seem much connection between one episode and another. All the same, it has a sort of way with it.

That feast the ‘Arcadia’ is nearly ended: in some ways the last book is the best (though a little spoiled I admit by brasting) and here the story is so like the part of Ivanhoe where they are all in Front-de-Boeuf’s castle, that I think Scott must have borrowed it.¹¹⁰ Your remarks about C. Rosetti’s poems are very tantalizing and I am longing to see them. How I do love expensive books if only I could afford them. Apropos of which, do you know anything of the artist Beardesley?¹¹¹ I fancy he was the man who started the modern school of ‘queer’ illustrations and the like: well I see you can get for £1.5s. a 1 vol. edition of Malory with his illustrations, published by Dent. What do you think it would be like? I only wish it was Macmillan and so we could have it on approval.

      You are quite wrong old man in saying I can draw ‘when I like’. On the contrary, if I ever can draw, it is exactly when I don’t like. If I sit down solemnly with the purpose of drawing, it is a sight to make me ‘ridiculous to the pedestrian population of the etc.’. The only decent things I do are scribbled in the margins of my dictionary–like Shirley–or the backs of old envelopes, when I ought to be attending to something else.

      I am quite as sorry as you that I can’t see my way to working Bleheris back into the Sunken Wood, for I think the idea might be worked a bit more: but don’t see how it is to be done without changing the whole plan of the story.

      The immediate prospects of my getting married ‘agreeably or otherwise’ as you kindly suggest, are not very numerous: but if you are getting uneasy about an invitation, rest assured, when the event comes off, if you behave you shall have one.

It was strange that Mrs K. should get Hardy’s ‘Under the Greenwood Tree’¹¹² out of the library last week, though I never got a chance of looking into it: somehow I don’t fancy Hardy is in my line, but then I always have a prejudice against people whom you’re always hearing about.

You say nothing about music now-a-days, and I am afraid I scarcely think of it: it annoys me hugely to think of the whole world of pleasures that I used to have and can’t enjoy now. Did you see a long article in the Times Literary Supplement¹¹³ about the ‘Magic Flute’¹¹⁴ which is on at the Shaftesbury? How I wish I could go up and hear it and also ‘Tristan and Isolde’¹¹⁵–though if I did it would be a disappointment in all probability.

      I am furious because in answer to my order for the ‘Chanson de Roland’ I am told it is out of print, which is very tiresome. Here I enclose another chapter, really all conversation this time, but can promise you a move next week. Don’t forget your own instalment which I look forward to very eagerly. Good night.

      Yours,

      Jack

       TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 105-6):

      [Gastons

      14? July 1916]

      My dear Papy,

This must be nipped in the bud: there can be no question of that. Get your lady friend’s visit over before the end of this month, at all costs, or else bid them avaunt till the winter.¹¹⁶ What should I do, left alone all day to face a situation of that sort? As well, the whole thing is tyranny, extortion, infliction, profligacy and arrogance of the worst sort, and therefore not to be borne. Have they not already taken more than their fair share of reprisals for our own visit so long ago? This ‘breakfast is a charming meal’ business can be overdone: however, a man can but die once, so I suppose destiny must take its course.

This is big news from the front, though whether it will have any permanent effect or not, of course we can’t say. The Ulster Division–what there are of them now–must have silenced the yapping politicians for ever.¹¹⁷ I suppose the losses are felt very heavily in Belfast: here, nobody seems to have noticed anything.

      Yes, that wheeze about ‘pulled through’ ought to ‘supply a long felt want’: it can be used on every occasion and ought to live for a very long time. I am sorry if any obscurity on my part gave rise to the ‘savage emphasis,’ but then his ordinary style of conversation is so–I think the word is ‘nervous’ in its 18th Century sense, that best describes it–that we must not pay too much attention to such things. I think, as you say, that things point to New, but of course we will keep an open mind in the meantime.

The literary event of the week is our respected laureate’s ode in the Times Literary Supplement:¹¹⁸ truly a most remarkable production, though I am afraid like the honest Major in ‘Patience,’ I must confess that ‘it seems to me nonsense’.¹¹⁹ To do the СКАЧАТЬ