you read Lloyd George’s speech the other day introducing the remark about the German potato bread–‘I fear that potato bread more than all Von Kluck’s strategy’.27 Although, as you have seen, I don’t often read the newspapers, I was glad when Kirk pointed that out to me. Most of the people one hears rather laugh at that bread ‘wheeze’, but I rather think Lloyd George’s is the wiser view. In the way of reading, I have been taking a course of ‘Poems and Ballads’, which, with the exception of the ‘Coign of a cliff’28 I had almost forgotten. It is rather pleasant to discover a book which is already at home for future use.
The weather here is very miserable, and I don’t think there has been an hour’s sunshine since I came back. Kirk asked me to write for Aeneid VII and VIII, published at 1/6 each by Cambridge University Press, editor Sedgwick.29 I am afraid these requests for books are rather numerous, but of course it is Kirk’s to command, mine not to question why, etc.
I have heard nothing from you now since the holydays, except the scant note of which you so rightly said ‘This is not a letter’. I sincerely hope you are not hors de combat. Do drop me a line soon and let me know.
your loving son,
Jack
TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 304):
[Gastons
21? March 1915]
My dear Papy,
In connection with the ‘question before the house’, I have, as you may have anticipated, only one answer. Apart from the natural inclination to go home if possible, it occurs to me that there is no knowing where such a period of non-homecoming might end. If we could be sure that this policy of frightfulness would be over by midsummer, I should not hesitate to spend Easter in England. But it would be illogical to stay here now on account of the submarines and cross then in spite of them. So that there is the frightful prospect of living on opposite sides of the channel for two, five, or six years.
That of course is unthinkable; and it is on that ground chiefly that I should recommend going home.
A minor point to be considered is that it would be as well to make use of my return ticket while it is still available. The same idea would make me inclined to travel by Fleetwood–for which my ticket is available–in preference to Larne and Stranraer. The difference in the length of the crossing is, I should say, by no means commensurate with the extra expense, and in comfort Fleetwood is probably superior. If these ideas fall in at all with your own, I should suggest that I leave Bookham on Thursday week (the 1st April), which would mean arriving home on the morning of Good Friday. That just leaves a comfortable space of time in which you can write to K. about it.
Last week end was busily employed in reading through De Quincey’s ‘Confessions’30 as a whole, for the first time, from which I derived great satisfaction. How much of it is true? The whole thing reads so like a novel that I am rather incredulous. Anyway it is certainly a splendid piece of English prose, especially in the rhetorical passages where he shows such a happy knack of getting pleasantly off the point. Thanks for the Aeneids: though, with the holydays near, if I had thought, I might have let it stand over.
As you say, our inability to cope with the submarine menace is a very serious thing; but not half so far reaching, so degrading, so essentially rotten as the behaviour of our working classes, who, tho’ so highly paid that they can afford to have three days off per week when nominally at work, yet because of some petty jealousies of their own are refusing to turn out the goods necessary to the military operations which the country is engaged upon. As K. points out, we are the only country which when the war broke out was ‘free’ from militarism, and yet about to engage in civil war: and we are now the only one that cannot secure peace among its working classes. But enough of all this. The weather, as usual of late, is disgusting except for one ‘pet’ day on Sunday. Hope to see you next week.
your loving son,
Jack
TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):
[Gastons
30 March 1915]
Dear Arthur,
How I pity you people who never have known the pleasures and the pains–which are an integral part of the pleasures–of a regular interchange of home-coming and school going. Even the terrors of Malvern were almost justified by the raptures with which one hailed the periodic deliverance. Here, where the minor disadvantages of my sojourns at Bookham are just enough to act as a foil to the pleasures of home, but not so great as to make the earlier part of the term unhappy, the arrangement is ideal. The satisfaction with which a day boy looks forward to a period of rest from his work, can be but the faintest shadow of a boarder’s feeling towards his return from temporary exile.
These last few days! Every little nuiscance, every stale or tiresome bit of work, every feeling of that estrangement which I never quite get over in another country, serves as a delightful reminder of how different it will all be soon. Already one’s mind dwells upon the sights and sounds and smells of home, the distant murmuring of the ‘yards’, the broad sweep of the lough, the noble front of the cave hill, and the fragrant little glens and breazy meadows of our own hills! And the sea! I cannot bear to live too far away from it. At Belfast, whether hidden or in sight, still it dominates the general impression of nature’s face, lending its own crisp flavour to the winds and its own subtle magic to horizons, even when they conceal it. A sort of feeling of space, and clean fresh vigour hangs over all in a country by the sea: how different from the stuffiness of Bookham: here the wind–that is to say, the true, brisk, boisterous irresistable wind–never comes.
And yet, I would not for a moment disparage the beauty of Surrey: these slumbering little vallies, and quaint farmsteads have a mellow charm of their own, that Ulster has not. But just now my End-of-Term feelings will not allow me to think of that. ‘But why’, you will ask ‘am I treated to these lyrical raptures?’ Indeed, Sir, I hardly know. My father wrote a few days ago, and asked if we should risk the submarines and come home, or not. I of course said that we should,–advancing many sage arguments thereto, and suggested leaving here next Friday. I have not been answered yet, but hope to goodness it is coming off. Anyway, a wave of End-of-Terminess came over me to night, and, as I had to communicate with someone, so you, poor fellow, got let in for this!
I had a letter from ‘Her’31 the other day, which is all satisfactory, Must shut up now.
Yours
Jack
Jack arrived in Belfast for his Easter holidays on 1 April and was there till 30 April. During this time he wrote the first poems he considered worthy of preservation. 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