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

9There were, in fact, a good many German submarines operating in the Irish Sea at this time. Lewis’s father was particularly upset over the raid near Fleetwood on 30 January 1915 when the Germans sank the Kilcoan, a collier designed by his brother Joseph.

10William Makepeace Thackeray, Henry Esmond (1852).

11George Henty (1832-1902), while serving with the army in the Crimea, became a war correspondent. Following this career in many countries, he became successful as the author of stories for boys mainly based on military history Out in the Pampas (1868) was followed by some 35 other titles.

12A family of Belgian refugees were evacuated to Great Bookham in the autumn of 1914. Lewis began visiting them with Mrs Kirkpatrick, and became infatuated with one of the young girls in the family He doubtless discussed his feelings for her with Arthur Greeves during the Christmas holidays. As to how much truth there was in what he wrote and said about the Belgian girl, see Lewis’s letter of 1 October 1931.

13Rudyard Kipling, Kim (1901), The Jungle Book (1894); The Second Jungle Book (1895); Puck of Pook’s Hill (1906).

14Albert Lewis had just acquired Kipling’s The Seven Seas (1896), which contains ‘The Story of Ung’.

15Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (1590, 1596), Book IV, Canto xii, 1.

16 Helena, a play by the Greek poet Euripides, was produced in 412 BC.

17Lewis is mocking his cousin Robert Heard Ewart.

18Mr Kirkpatrick and Lord Balfour (1848-1930), were born in 1848, making them 67.

19Algernon Charles Swinburne, A Study of Shakespeare (1880).

201 Samuel 16:23: ‘The evil spirit from God was upon Saul.’

21Warren had only just returned from France, and having a week’s leave, he and Jack spent part of it together at home. Jack returned to Great Bookham on 9 February.

22Presumably the Belgian girl he had written about in his previous letter.

23Percy Bysshe Shelley, Adonais (1821), XLV, 397.

24Lord Kitchener (1850-1916) was Secretary of State for War.

25Walter Savage Landor, Pericles and Aspasia (1836-7).

26Sir Walter Scott, Kenilworth (1821).

27David Lloyd George (1863-1945), Minister of Munitions, gave a speech on 28 February in which he appealed for an end to labour disputes. ‘We laugh at things in Germany,’ he said, ‘that ought to terrify us. We say, “Look at the way they are making their bread–out of potatoes, ha, ha.” Aye, that potato bread spirit is something which is more to dread than to mock at. I fear that more than I do even von Hindenburg’s strategy, efficient as it may be. That is the spirit in which a country should meet a great emergency, and instead of mocking at it we ought to emulate it.’ The Times (1 March 1915), p. 10.

28Algernon Charles Swinburne, Poems and Ballads, Second Series (1878). The poem entitled ‘A Forsaken Garden’ begins ‘In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland’.

29 Publius Vergili Maronis Aeneidos: Liber VII, edited by Arthur Sidgwick (1879); The Aeneid of Vergil: Book VIII, edited with notes and vocabulary by Arthur Sidgwick (1879).

30Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1822).

31i.e. the Belgian girl.

32Lewis has borrowed the name from Malory. In Le Morte d’Arthur Galahad is the son of Launcelot and Elaine, and destined because of his immaculate purity to achieve the Holy Grail.

33John Rutherford, The Bread of the Treshams (1903).

34William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew (1623).

35Richard Wagner’s opera Lohengrin was first performed in 1850.

36The title Richard Warner had chosen for his opera was The Venusberg, but he changed it to Tannhäuser when he learned that certain wits were making a joke of it. The opera was first performed in 1845.

37Franz Schubert’s Rosamund was first performed in 1823.

38The ‘Fire Music’ is the Interlude to Act III, scene 3 of Richard Wagner’s opera Die Walküre, or The Valkyrie, first performed in 1870 and part of his Ring of the Nibelung cycle.

39For information on music recorded on gramophone records see Francis F. Clough and G.J. Cuming, The World’s Encyclopaedia of Recorded Music (1952).

40Arthur Clutton-Brock, William Morris: His Work and Influence (1914).

41Jane (‘Janie’) Agnes McNeill (1889-1959) was the daughter of James Adams McNeill (1853-1907), headmaster of Campbell College 1890-1907, and Margaret Cunningham McNeill. Mr McNeill had at one time been Flora Lewis’s teacher, and he and his wife and daughter lived near the Lewises in ‘Lisnadene’, 191 Belmont Road, Strandtown. When he was young Jack Lewis both liked and disliked Janie. As time went on he realized that Jane, who would have liked to have gone to university, had remained home to look after her mother. He came to admire her much, and in time they became devoted friends. He was also close to Mrs McNeill, whose company he greatly enjoyed. That Hideous Strength is dedicated to Janie. See her biography in CG.

42Charlotte Brontë, Shirley (1849); Jane Eyre (1847).

43 Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, an opera by Richard Wagner, was first performed in 1868.

44Arthur did not seem entirely sure what this ‘Galloping Horse’ piece was. In Lewis’s next letter of 11 May, he said to Arthur, ‘Why didn’t you give me the number of the Polonaise: and what cheek to say “I think it is in A Flat”–when a journey downstairs would make sure.’ If he had looked carefully Arthur might have discovered that it was not one of Chopin’s Polonaises, but one of his Mazurkas.

45William Morris, The Roots of the Mountains (1890). The Longman’s Pocket Library edition was published in two volumes in 1913.

46Hans Christian Andersen, The Mermaid and Other Fairy Tales, translated by Mrs Edgar Lucas, with coloured illustrations by Maxwell Armfield, Everyman’s Library [1914].

47Albert and his sons were delighted with the new rector of St Mark’s. This was the Reverend Arthur William Barton (1881-1962) who was born in Dublin and had gone, like Warnie and Jack, to Wynyard School. He took his BA from Trinity College, Dublin in 1903, and his BD in 1906. He was ordained in 1905 and was curate at St George’s, Dublin, from 1904 until 1905, and curate of Howth from 1905 to 1913. From 1912 to 1914 he was head of the university settlement at Trinity College Mission in Belfast. He was instituted as rector of St Mark’s, Dundela, on 6 April 1914, and remained there until 1925 when he became rector of Bangor. In 1927 he was made Archdeacon of Down, and in 1930 he became Bishop of Kilmore, Elphin and Ardagh. In 1939 Barton became Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland, which post he held until his retirement in 1956. In his description of Barton Warnie said, ‘There must have been few who met him and did not like him, and he was soon to become a constant and welcome visitor at Little Lea. He was a man of sunny temperament, with a great sense of fun, and a caressing voice; he brought into the rather narrow air of a Belfast suburb the breath of a wider culture and a more humane outlook; his society was refreshing. What was of more importance, he was an excellent and conscientious Priest, who found the religion of his parish sunk into mere formalism under the regime of his slothful predecessor, and who set on foot a renaissance’ (LP IV: 178).

48Purdysburn was a lunatic asylum.

49‘But enough of these toys’, Francis Bacon said in ‘Of Masques and Triumphs’, Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral (1625).