[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 a long time, and there is a lot of good stuff in it. One ‘nice point’ is that the names of the authors are printed at the end of the volume and not under each piece: it is very amusing–and somewhat humiliating–to see how many you know.
This business about matriculation and enlisting is ‘very tiresome’, as the Mikado said.12 Are you [sure] that it applies to those who are under age, and who are also Irish? If so, as you say, we must think it over together. Of course in dealing with such a point we must always remember that a period of something more than a year elapses between the time of joining up and one’s getting any where near the front.13 However, it can wait until we are together at Easter.
And now my dear parent, as the time alloted to correspondence is drawing to its close, I fear I must relinquish–or in other words it is time for Church. You will observe that this is one of those houses where we rise so early on Sundays that there is a long interval between breakfast and our Calvinistic exercises.
your loving son,
Jack
TO ARTHUR GREEVES (LP V: 53-4):
[Gastons
8 February 1916]
My dear Arthur,
You lucky devil! It makes me very envious to hear of all these good things going on at home while I am languishing in the wilds of Surrey.
I am surprised to hear that you never heard of Barkworth,14 as I have seen his name in the musical part of the Times and other papers: I believe he is one of the promising musicians of the day–that is if there are ever going to be English musicians and an English school of opera. Personally I should have been very much interested to hear his ‘Romeo and Juliet’. If the only fault is that it is blustering, you might say the same of the ‘Flying Dutchman’15 or the ‘Valkyrie’, mightn’t you? What did poor Willie Jaffe think of it? (I suppose you mean him by W.J.–) Hardly in his line I should fancy. I am sure ‘Pagliaci’ and ‘Cavalleria’ were lovely, and I would especially like to have seen ‘Rigoletto’, because I know the plot.16
I quite agree with you that a gramophone spoils one for hearing opera: the real difficulty is to find for what a gramophone does not spoil one. True, it improves your musical taste and gives you opportunities of hearing things that you might otherwise never know: but what is the use of that when immediately afterwards it teaches you to expect a standard of performance which you can’t get, or else satiates you with all the best things so that they are stale before you have heard them once on the stage? Or in other words, like everything else it is a disappointment, like every other pleasure it just slips out of your hand when you think you’ve got it. The most striking example of this is the holiday which one looks forward to all the term and which is over and gone while one is still thinking how best to enjoy it.
By all this you will gather that I am in a bad temper: well, so I am–that bloody little beast my fellow pupil has sneaked upstairs for a bath and I can now hear him enjoying it and I know there will be no hot water left for me. They only raise hot water here about once a month.
However. Let us proceed: do you read Ruskin at all? I am sure you don’t. Well I am reading a book of his at present called ‘A joy for ever’,17 which is charming, though I am not sure you would care for it. I also still employ the week ends with the Faerie Queene. I am now in the last three books, which, though not much read as a rule, are full of good things. When I have finished it, I am going to get another of Morris’ romances, or his translation of one of the sagas–perhaps that of Grettir the Strong.18 This can be got either for 5/-in the Library edition (my ‘Sigurd the Volsung’19 one) or for 3/6 in the ‘Silver Library’ (like my ‘Pearl Maiden’).20 Which would you advise?
By the way, why is your letter dated Wednesday? It has arrived here this evening–Tuesday–am I to understand that you posted it tomorrow, or that you have been carrying it about in your pocket for a week?
Isn’t it awful about Harding? I hear from my father that Hope is going out.21 I suppose that by this time the jeunes mariés have got into Schomberg.22 Why are your letters always so much shorter than mine? Therefore I stop.
Yours,
Jack
TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 56-7):
[Gastons]
Postmark: 26 February 1916
My dear Papy,
‘Well I calls it ’ard’ as your friend used to say of the ’alf hour: I am accustomed, nay I am hardened to missing opera companies: but that I should be exiled in the wilds of England while Robin W. Gribbon and Lucius O’Brien23 are visiting Belfast–this is too utterly all but. But why might I ask are these nonconformist canals reciting in the school house of Saint Mark?24 What have they to do with us? Let them get behind us. Joking apart, one might get a ‘running river of innocent merriment’ out of their efforts, ‘extremely stretched and conned with cruel pains’. Perhaps however you have your own reasons for reverencing the school house. Is it not the theatre of an immortal rendition of that ‘powerful’ role of Gesler,25 and also of an immortal brick-dropping re an immortal preacher? There too the honey tongued tenor of Garranard–but we will draw a veil over the painful scene.
There