My dear Arthur,
I believe it is Lamb who says somewhere that he does not know whether it is more delightful to set out for a holiday or return from one: perhaps you hardly agree with him! Though I am sure he hated his office (read ‘The Superannuated Man’)148 quite as much as you do. But of course he means, I suppose, the getting back to home, to ones books etc and not to work. However I suppose you are gradually getting ‘broken in’.
The beastly summer is at last over here, and good old Autumn colours & smells and temperatures have come back. Thanks to this we had a most glorious walk on Saturday: it was a fine cool, windy day & we set out after lunch to go to a place called ‘Friday Street’ which is a very long walk from here through beautiful woods and vallies that I don’t know well.149 After several hours wandering over fields & woods etc. with the aid of a map we began to get lost and suddenly at about 4 o’clock–we had expected to reach the place by that time–we found ourselves in a place where we had been an hour before! You will understand that while the others were only annoyed at this, I felt je ne sais quoi de dreamlike and terrifying sensation at the idea of wandering round in circles through these big, solemn woods; also there was a certain tinge of ‘Alice-in-W-ism’ about it. We had a lot of difficulty in at last reaching the place, but it was glorious when we got there. You are walking in the middle of a wood when all of a sudden you go downwards and come to a little open hollow just big enough for a little lake and some old, old red-tiled houses: all round it the trees tower up on rising ground and every road from it is at once swallowed up in them. You might walk within a few feet of it & suspect nothing unless you saw the smoke rising up from some cottage chimney. Can you imagine what it was like? Best of all, we came down to the little inn of the village and had tea there with–glory of glories–an old tame jackdaw hopping about our feet and asking for crumbs. He is called Jack and will answer to his name.
The inn has three tiny but spotlessly clean bedrooms, so some day,–if the gods will, you & I are going to stay there. The inn is called the ‘Stephen Langton’ and dates from the time of that gentleman’s wars against the king or the barons or somebody (you’ll know I expect),150 tho’ of course it has been rebuilt since. I don’t like playing the guide-book, but it was so ravishing that I had to tell you. We were so late getting there that it was dark soon after we left, and often going astray we didn’t get home till ten o’clock–dead beat but happy.
Partly because the country we saw that day was so like it I have been reading again the second volume of Malory, especially the part of the ‘Sangreal’ which I had forgotten. With all its faults, in small doses this book is tip-top: those mystic parts are very good to read late at night when you are drowsy and tired and get into a sort of ‘exalted’ mood. Do you know what I mean? You so often share feelings of mine which I can’t explain that I hope you do: mention this subject when you next write. Besides this I have finished ‘Comus’ with great enjoyment: I have also re-read for the thousandth time ‘Rapunzel’ and some other favourite bits of Morris, while through the week I have read an excellent novel of Vachell’s ‘The Paladin’151 which you have probably read too and also dipped often into Boswell’s ‘Life of Johnson’.152 Being entirely made up of conversation I don’t think it is a book to be read continuously, tho’ it is very good fun in bits: you are thinking of getting it I believe. I agree with you that I must read some more books in the particular ‘genre’ of ‘Our Village’ etc, but there are so many things to read that I don’t know where to begin. I forget what edition you are getting of the ‘Scenes of Clerical life’153
As to the fate of sad Papillon, I will look at the exact place of leaving-off when I go upstairs & write it down somewhere in pencil: unless you decide to go on with it don’t waste time & energy copying the rest but send me instead the first drafts of your new work. I should be glad, though, to see you going on with it and have the complete tale, for there is good stuff in it: however, I can’t preach in this respect now! Loki & Dennis & Bleheris, all our operas, plays etc go one way; perhaps they are caught like Wan Jadis in the Grey Marish on the way to the country of the past!154 For my part I am at present engaged in making huge plans both for prose and verse none of which I shall try. I begin to see that short, slight stories & poems are all I am fit for at present & that it would be better to write & finish one of such than to begin & leave twenty ambitious epic-poems or romances. I wait eagerly either for another instalment of the Watersprite or else some new venture from you: you shall have the first thing I do, if I ever do anything.
How I wish I had been with you at Mr Thompson’s.155 Everything seems to have happened well after my departure–I suppose you say no wonder! what a female-minded person I am getting! I would cross out that remark as peevish & ‘cattish’, but it would make a mess and you would only wonder what was underneath. Take it as unsaid.
Have you got or begun the ‘Kalevala’ yet? Give me your first impressions when you do. Papillon has got to where they are both under the water and ends with the words ‘it shot him much farther than he had intended so that he nearly lost sight of the fairy’. Looking at it revives my enthusiasm. Do go on with it if you can: certainly send me the rest provided this doesn’t interfere with any new work. Now good night Galahad the ‘haut prince’ as Malory [would] say,
Yours
Jack
P.S. Poor puppy!! What a life it’ll have! I shall poison it in kindness when I come home!
P.P.S. Why do your letters never come till Wednesday now?
TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 129-30):
[Gastons]
10/6/16 [6 October 1916]
My dear Papy,
Many thanks for the catalogues, which were necessary to my peace of mind. I shouldn’t try the ‘conceit’ if I were you, as two can play at that game, and you might get a number of strange parcels.
Since I last wrote, that awe-inspiring person the Tutor for Entrances of Balliol has deigned to forward us last year’s scholarship papers for that college–although we are I think quite determined now on the big group. He distinguished himself by doing the very thing that we have so often discussed–addressing his envelope to the ‘Rev. T.W. Kirkpatrick’, thinking I suppose that no one except a clergyman could possibly be entrusted with the youth of a nation. The papers themselves were pretty much what we expected, and not discouraging. The subject for an English essay–with no alternative–was ‘Diplomacy’ which is rather a mouthful. It would involve a good deal of history. Kirk has been growing very enthusiastic on the superior composition of these papers to the Trinity ones, which indeed were rather unintelligently drawn up. Some of the pieces in the scholarship exams are desperately hard, while others in the Fellowship ones are ridiculously easy: of course it is the competition and the standard required which really makes the difference. I agree with you that a ‘course’ would be much worse than this scheme: for while it is true that a man can always learn a course, another can always learn it better.
I am reading at present a book whose scene is laid in Oxford and which tells one a good deal about the University (not Tom Brown),156 ‘Lady Connie’ by Mrs. Humphrey Ward.157 She is a favourite of yours, is she not? I have never read her until now, and she seems to have many points. She is rather a pedant tho’, insists too much on her ‘culture’, and tells us a great deal about tanagra Statues, Titainesque effects, discoveries in Crete, Euripides, Goethe, etc., etc. You know what I mean.