made which is in the mouth of the pipe at this moment. I have also given the spring-tap up beyond the small pond a night turned on, and I trust that by thus controlling in-flow and outflow of water I can soon nurse the pond back to its old level.
At any rate I don’t see how it can sink as long as its escape is bunged up. As to the degree of loss at present, as there are no perpendicular banks anywhere it is hard to gauge. I should think that the most pessimistic episode could hardly be more than ½ of a foot: i.e. a difference one is unconscious of in bathing. Still I grudge every inch. By the way, it has just occurred to me that the sinking may not be due to the draining at all: for the old ‘channel’ escape, when I looked at it just before the operations began, had certainly widened itself extremely from what I first remembered, and must have been letting out more than it ought. In that case the new pipe may have arrested rather than created a wastage.
I have been infernally busy getting ready for Schools and have therefore little to tell you (By the bye Percy Tweedlepippin74 is my colleague and his principles as an examiner are perhaps worth recording. In answer to a suggested question of mine he retorted ‘Its no good setting that. They’d know that!’)
I have read, or rather re-read, one novel namely Pendennis.75 How pleased the Pdaitabird would have been—why hadn’t I the grace to read it a few years ago. Why I re-read it now I don’t quite know—I suppose some vague idea that it was time I gave Thackeray another trial. The experiment, on the whole, has been a failure. I can just see, mind you, why they use words like ‘great’ and ‘genius’ in talking of him which we don’t use of Trollope. There are indications, or breakings in, all the time of something beyond Trollope’s range. The scenery for one thing (tho’ to be sure there is only one scene in Thackeray—always summer evening—English-garden—rooks crowing) has a sort of depth (I mean in the painting sense) wh. Trollope hasn’t got. Still more there are the sudden ‘depths’ in a very different sense in Thackeray. There is one v. subordinate scene in Pendennis where you meet the Marquis of Steyne and a few of his led captains and pimps in a box at a theatre. It only lasts a page or so—but the sort of rank, salt, urinous stench from the nether pit nearly knocks you down and clearly has a kind of power that is quite out of Trollope’s range. I don’t think these bits really improve Thackeray’s books: they do, I suppose, indicate whatever we mean by ‘genius’. And if you are the kind of reader who values genius you rate Thackeray highly.
My own secret is—let rude ears be absent—that to tell you the truth, brother, I don’t like genius. I like enormously some things that only genius can do: such as Paradise Lost and the Divine Comedy.76 But it is the results I like. What I don’t care twopence about is the sense (apparently dear to so many) of being in the hands of ‘a great man’—you know; his dazzling personality, his lightening energy, the strange force of his mind—and all that. So that I quite definitely prefer Trollope—or rather this re-reading of Pen. confirms my long standing preference. No doubt Thackeray was the genius: but Trollope wrote the better books.
All the old things I objected to in Thackeray I object to still. Do you remember saying of Thomas Browne in one of your letters ‘Was there anything he didn’t love?’ One can ask just the opposite of Thackeray. He is wrongly accused of making his virtuous women too virtuous: the truth is he does not make them virtuous enough. If he makes a character what he wd. call ‘good’ he always gets his own back by making her (its always a female character) a bigot and a blockhead. Do you think, Sir, pray, that there are many slum parishes which could not produce half a dozen old women quite as chaste and affectionate as Helen Pendennis and ten times more charitable and more sensible? Still—the Major deserves his place in ones memory. So does Foker—surely the most balanced picture of the kindly vulgar young fop that there is. I’m not sure about Costigan. There’s a good deal too much of Thackeray’s habit of laughing at things like poverty and mispronunciation in the Costigan parts. Then, of course there’s ‘the style’—Who the deuce wd. begin talking about the style in a novel till all else was given up.
I have had another visit to Whipsnade77—Foord Kelsie motored Arthur and me over on a fine Monday when Arthur was staying here. This was not the best company in the world with whom to revisit Whipsnade as F.K. combines extreme speed of tongue with a very slow walk, which is reduced to a stop when he has a good thing to say. However, after lunch he very wisely went and sat down and left Arthur and me on our own. Arthur was like a child: painfully divided between a desire ‘not to tire himself’ and a desire to see everything. When I tried to construct a harmony between these two aims by suggesting a route which would not make a very long walk and yet not really miss much, he was perfectly intractable because everything, to left, or to right, distracted him and he never cd. be made to believe that it was something we either had seen already or were just going to see. In fact it was a sad contrast to [the] sauntering unanimity of our last trip to the same place.
Perhaps however it was just as well that A. drew me out of my course, for the place has been so increased and altered that I should have missed a good deal. The novelties include lions, tigers, polar bears, beavers etc. Bultitude was still in his old place. Wallaby wood, owing to the different season, was improved by masses of bluebells: the graceful faun-like creatures hopping out of one pool of sunshine into another over English wildflowers—and so much tamer now than when you saw them that it is really no difficulty to stroke them—and English wildbirds singing deafeningly all round, came nearer to ones idea of the world before the Fall than anything I ever hoped to see.
One other important experience, as experiences go in a retired life, was my first visit to Covent Garden. It suddenly occurred to me this spring that my desire to hear Siegfried dated from 1912, and that 20 years was quite long enough to have waited. So I stood myself 15/-worth of ‘Amphitheatre Stalls’. I mention it here not in order to describe Siegfried (wh. I enjoyed quâ music and drama enormously) but to record my complete disillusionment as regards the Covent Garden level of performance. It was in fact exactly like any other performance of an opera: i.e. one’s inner criticism ran on the familiar lines ‘Ah this is a lovely bit coming now…what a pity that girl hasn’t a really good voice’—in fact I was on the point of saying to myself ‘By Jove its a splendid thing—what wouldn’t I give to hear it done properly at Covent Garden.’ When I say it was just like any other performance of an opera I mean that out of the eight characters two were magnificent, one ‘had been a very fine singer in his young days,’ two were quite adequate but had no v. great passages to sing, and two were frankly bad. The odd thing was that the acting was a great deal better than I had dared to expect. I had always supposed that these ‘head bummers’ were even insolently negligent of it: as a matter of fact they were distinctly good.
The Lamb’s letters must surely be a new Everyman—and a very good one too.78 Confound those Tower of Glass people—I will write to them. I have dozens of things to reply to in this letter and your last, but it is now 4.30 and finished papers are beginning to dribble in. Also I am nearly asleep. I shall not be able to write to you again till examining is over—i.e. in August. I don’t think the passage in S. James is really the same as the ‘Touch Wood’ business. I shall try to get down to Ardglass for a day at least when I’m over.79
Yours
Jack.
P.S. I had nearly forgotten to acknowledge the philosophical instrument wh. you so unexpectedly sent. After one or two experiments I am getting a gadget made for fastening it onto my belt as I can find no pocket which will keep it perpendicular. Thanks very much. It is a thing I have been vaguely wanting to possess for many years.
I am afraid it will be a long time before I can resume proper letter writing—examining