Clive Lewis - Collected Letters Volume One - Family Letters 1905–1931

You ask me whether I have ever been in love: fool as I am, I am not quite such a fool as all that. But if one is only to talk from firsthand experience on any subject, conversation would be a very poor business. But though I have no personal experience of the thing they call love, I have what is better–the experience of Sapho, 100 of Euripides of Catullus 101 of Shakespeare of Spenser of Austen of Bronte of, of–anyone else I have read. We see through their eyes. And as the greater includes the less, the passion of a great mind includes all the qualities of the passion of a small one. Accordingly, we have every right to talk about it. And if you read any of the great love-literature of any time or country, you will find they all agree with me, and have nothing to say about your theory that ‘love=friendship+sensual feelings’. Take the case I mentioned before. Were Louis & Shirley ever friends, or could they ever be? Bah! Don’t talk twaddle. On the contrary, the mental love may exist without the sensual or vice versa, but I doubt if either could exist together with friendship. What nonsense we both talk, don’t we? If any third person saw our letters they would have great ‘diversion’ wouldn’t they?

In the meantime, why have no catalogues reached me yet? By the time this reaches you, you will I hope have read your course of Swinburne I mapped out, and can send me your views. So glad you too like the ‘Faerie Queen’, isn’t it great? I have been reading a horrible book of Jack London’s called ‘The Jacket’. 102 If you come across [it] anywhere, don’t read it. It is about the ill-treatment in an American prison, and has me quite miserabl. Write soon.

Yours

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 24-5):

[Gastons]

Postmark: 22 October 1915

My dear Papy,

The state of our library at Leeborough must be perfectly apalling: how such a collection of ignorances and carelessnesses could have got together on the shelves of our room passes my comprehension. As well, where is the beautiful quarto edition? What is a quarto? I don’t believe you have the vaguest idea, and should not be surprised if the edition in question is merely an 8vo., (-no, that doesn’t mean ‘in eight volumes’, though I too thought so once.) In fact there are a whole lot of things in your letter that I don’t understand. What are ‘vagrom’ men might I ask? I have consulted all the dictionaries at Gastons and failed to find the word. ‘But enough of these toys’ as Verulam remarks. 103

Kirk has just called my attention to an amusing article in the papers which I daresay you have read. 104 It appears that a Radley boy who had been allowed home for a day to see his brother who was going to the front, overstayed his leave by permission of his father, and on his return was flogged by the Head. If you remember, there was good reason because it turned out that the journey was out of joint or something, so that the fellow couldn’t get home and back in time. Moreover, the father sent a telegram. Well the boy and the father have brought an action, and now we come to the point. One of the witnesses called by the schoolmaster to defend his conduct was a certain Canon Sydney Rhodes James, sometime headmaster of Malvern. As Kirk points out, it is amusing to see that he alone was picked out of all England to defend a pedagogue from the boy he had flogged: so far he ‘outshone millions tho’ bright’. Unfortunately the judge, who I fancy must have known his man, decided that Jimmy’s theories of school management would be off the point, and did not call him. The evidence I suppose would have consisted in an illuminated discourse on ‘the young squirm’s’ conduct.

The chief amusement here is the Zeppelins. We saw the bombardment of Waterloo station going on that last time they were here: at least that is what we were told it was. All you could see were some electrical flashes in the sky caused by the bombs, and of course it was too far away to hear anything. Now that people know that they are about, we are always hearing them going over at nights, but it usually turns out to be a motor byke in the distance. Once we heard the noise of the thump of a hammer at Guildford, and people said that was the dropping of bombs, but I have my doubts.

Isn’t Jimmy good this week in Punch? I am glad to hear that Lily and Gordon are not going out of the neighbourhood, as they would make a bad gap. The sponge etc. must be having a long journey, but I hope they are like the mills of the Gods. 105

your loving

son Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 31):

[Gastons]

Postmark: 11 November 1915

My dear Papy,

As sole companion on a desert island, as a friend to talk to on the night before one was hanged, or, as in the present case, for a helper when one lies stunned in a muddy road, whom would we choose rather than Bill Patterson? 106 Ah! Bill. He is a joy for ever, is he not?–to himself. When you talk about the collision as you do, I take it to be mostly codotta: if I thought otherwise, I would be seriously alarmed. In any case, you must not allow this tendency to dissipation to run away with you at a time like the present when one sees the angel of death flapping his wings from the shores of Totting to hordes that dwell in the skirts of the rising sun, and things of that sort–instead of which, you go about indulging in debauches at the dentist’s. Is this not worthy of the severest censure?

I see no reason to congratulate the Times on its recruiting supplement in any way, nor the country on the necessity (which it allows to remain) for such publications being made. I am afraid that we must admit that Kipling’s career as a poet is over. The line to which you refer is the merest prose, as well as very bad metre. And why is the word ‘stone’ introduced, except to rhyme with o’erthrown? 107 On the other hand, if his career be over, we may say that it is creditably over, and if I, for one, had such a record of poetry behind me I should be well satisfied. I conceive that Kipling is one of those writers who has the misfortune in common with Longfellow, of always being known and liked for his worst works. I mean his poetry to the agaraioi means merely the Barrack Room Ballads, 108 which, however original and clever, are not poetry at all. ‘The brightest jewels in his crown’ as the hymnal would say, are, I suppose, ‘The Brushwood boy’, 109 ‘Puck of Pook’s Hill’, ‘The jungle book’ and various of the scattered poems, among which I should place first the dedication piece about ‘my brother’s spirit’ and ‘gentlemen unafraid’. ‘The last rhyme of true Thomas’, ‘The first and last Chantry’ and several others which I forget. 110 He is less of a scholar than Newbolt, 111 but he is also freer from conventional and obvious sentiment: his metres are often too clever. With it all however, I think he will survive, if any of the present crew do. Except Yeats, I don’t know of any other who is in the least likely to.

I myself have been reading this week a book by a man named Love Peacock, of whom I had not heard, but who seems to be famous. He was a contemporary of Lamb, Hazlitt, Byron etc., and an intimate friend of Shelly. The book is a farcical novel called ‘Headlong Hall’, 112 and very amusing.

As to the overcoat, I agree with you that it will be better to leave the business till the holydays, as the effort to make Bamford understand anything at all under any circumstances whatever is by no means child’s play. I hope you have not any urgent desire for the other one. According to my computations the half term was about three days ago. As I must now go and add to the glories of Greek literature by a very choice fragment of Attic prose, good night.

your loving son,

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 22):