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

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СКАЧАТЬ or three chaps here remember Mears.

      Are you sure you have packed my Prayer Book? I cannot find it anywhere. If you find it at home, please send it on as soon as possible, and some stamps.

      The weather here is miserably cold, and the air is thin and rarified: one can see ones breath all the time. One good thing is that we have hot water in the mornings, which we didnt have either at Campbell or Wynyard.

      I haven’t discovered the ‘small museum’ yet, and I am inclined to think it is a minus quantity.

      Now I must stop.

      yours affectionate

      son,

      Jacks

       TO HIS FATHER (LP III: 228):

      [Cherbourg School]

      Postmark: 5 February 1911

      My dear Papy,

Sunday come round again–hurray! We had great fun this week, we went to the ‘Messiah’.² It was only an amateur performance, but still it was simply lovely. I heard our old friends ‘Comfort ye’, and ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’. The former was specially well sung by a stout and hideous gentleman with an excellent voice.

      On Wednesday we went for a walk across the flat side of Malvern and a funny thing happened. We were going through some fields when some one said ‘look out’, and we cleared off the path to make way for a college run which was coming. First came some big chaps with blue shields on their shirts, some distinction, I don’t know what. Then came a motley crowd, and then!: A familiar voice said ‘Hullo Jack’, and looking round, I saw Pinguis himself. There he was. Its rather a comfort to know that he likes running.

      That reminds me, the College breaks up on the 4th of April, and we do not [leave] till some days later. I suppose however you will arrange that I always go home on the same day as Pinguis. Be sure and tell me in your next letter what you think about this: I am positive you will agree. So when it gets near April 4th, just write to Mr. Allen and tell him about my coming home early. If you don’t do this I don’t know how we shall manage, for I couldn’t face this complicated Malvern journey alone.

      Last week we had some very bitter weather, but we did not feel it much as we wore our sweaters under our greatcoats. The other day we went off for a ripping walk over the hills, right across into Wales, a good step on the other side, and home through a sort of cutting.

      Only nine more weeks if I come home on the 4th.

      Yours loving

      son,

      J.

       TO HIS FATHER (LP III: 239):

      [Cherbourg School]

      May 14th [1911]

      My dear P.,

      Thanks very much indeed for the money. I certainly did have a great fright, I could not think what had become of it. However I realised that it must have got left behind. I am glad to hear that Warnie has got his shove, where is he in his new form? I was pained and surprised to hear that you were not producing ‘an old soldier and his wife’, they would have been a novelty if nothing else.

      We have found this time that it is much more comfortable to have lunch at Shrewsbury and go on by a later train.

Thank goodness that old pig Jonah has left, so I shall be able to enjoy myself this term. In his place we have got a chap named Turner, he is quite decent. In fact he is a very queer fellow indeed, I do not understand him and I think there is a good deal more to find out about him than anyone guesses. He is very quiet. Next week we are going to see Benson³ in ‘The Merchant of Venice’.⁴ Of course Malvern has a rotten theatre, but it always gets very good things, I can’t think why.

I enclose a photo of the characters in our play (that we had last term), in their stage costumes. The people from left to right are back row, Clutterbuck,⁵ Nadin, front row, Me, Maxwell, Bowen.

      your loving son

      Jack

       TO HIS FATHER (LP III: 284-5):

      Cherbourg.

      Malvern. Postmark: 5 May 1912

      My dear P.,

      We arrived safely here on the Friday as you know by our telegram, and found that Cherbourg, contrary to all expectations, had come back on Wednesday and I was late. I did not weep.

On the boat after you had gone, a solid phalanx of ‘young persons’ lined up on the quay and sang ‘let’s have a game of ring of roses’. You would have enjoyed it. The Malvern weather is exactly like the home–rotten. We have two new masters this term: the 1st a monstrosity of 6 ft., 6 ins height whom I don’t like at all, so far as I have any opinion yet. He is called Eden. The other is of reasonable height, and, so far as we can see, fairly decent. But that remains to be seen. There is a new matron, Miss Gosling, who seems to be passably inoffensive–but of course is not nearly as decent as Miss Cowie.⁶ The small master’s name is Harris.⁷ I hate starting a new term with an absolutely new staff, and such a new staff too.

      We left Liverpool this time by the 2.40 instead of the 12, and I think we will do so next time; it is a better train. your loving son Jack

      The Lewis Papers contain no letters from Jack written between that of 5 May 1912 and the one below. The lacuna is possibly explained by the fact that whatever letters he wrote have not survived. However, a more likely explanation is that his energies were being poured into writing of a different sort. His personal ‘Renaissance’ began when he came across the Christmas issue of The Bookman for December 1911 and saw the words Siegfried and the Twilight of the Gods, with a picture by Rackham illustrating the first part of Richard Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung saga. ‘Pure “Northernness” engulfed me,’ he said, ‘a vision of huge, clear spaces hanging above the Atlantic in the endless twilight of Northern summer’ (SBJ V). This love of myth led him between the summers of 1912 and 1913 to write 819 lines of an epic called ‘Loki Bound’ which was Norse in subject and Greek in form. He was as well a frequent contributor to The Cherbourg School Magazine, in which his articles are remarkable achievements for one so young. But for the moment, however, he had his mind set on winning a Scholarship to Malvern College.

       It was also at this point that Jack became an unbeliever. A major cause was the ‘Occultist fancies’ he had picked up from the matron of Cherbourg, Miss G.E. Cowie. He got into his head that ‘No clause of my prayer was to be allowed to pass muster unless it was accompanied by what I called a “realisation”, by which I meant a certain vividness of the imagination and the affections. My nightly task was to produce by sheer will-power a phenomenon which will-power could never produce’ (SBJ IV). There were also unconscious causes СКАЧАТЬ