Collected Letters Volume Two: Books, Broadcasts and War, 1931–1949. Walter Hooper

      Clearly the proper [answer] is ‘Ah such nonsense.’ I actually replied by telling them to consult the artist, and to ask him to consider the proposal on purely aesthetic grounds. Unless the artist is a fool, that ought to safeguard us pretty well, and if he is—why then there is no help for us in any case.

It just occurs to me as I write, that Chevasse in this matter is probably the unwilling mouthpiece of the Select Vestry: I daresay even that the monstrous regiment of women,⁶¹ incarnated in Lily Ewart,⁶² is really at the bottom of it. Zounds!—I’d like a few minutes at the bottom of her! No ‘thought infirm’ would there ‘stain my cheek’:⁶³ a firm hand rather would stain both hers. I also sent them the (revised by Christie) inscription. That, I think, is all the business news.

As regards books—what time have I to read? Tutorial necessities have spurred me into reading another Carlyle ‘Past and Present’⁶⁴ which I recommend: specially the central part about Abbot Samson. Like all Carlyle it gets a little wearisome before the end—as all listening to these shouting authors does. But the pungency and humour and frequent sublimity is tip-top. It is very amusing to read the 19th century editor’s preface (in our Leeborough edition),⁶⁵ obviously by a P’daita:⁶⁶ pointing out that, of course, the matter of the book is out of date, but it ‘lives by its style’. ‘We can afford to smile at the pessimism with which the sage approached problems that have since vanished like a dream before the onward march etc. etc’ Actually the book is an indictment of the industrial revolution pointing out precisely the problems we have not solved and prophesying most of the things that have happened since.

      I get rather annoyed at this endless talk about books ‘living by the style’. Jeremy Taylor ‘lives by the style in spite of his obsolete theology’; Thos. Browne does the same, in spite of ‘the obsolete cast of his mind’: Ruskin and Carlyle do the same in spite of their ‘obsolete social and political philosophy’. To read histories of literature one would suppose that the great authors of the past were a sort of chorus of melodious idiots who said, in beautifully cadenced language that black was white and that two and two made five. When one turns to the books themselves-well I, at any rate, find nothing obsolete. The silly things these great men say, were as silly then as they are now: the wise ones are as wise now as they were then.

At this stage in my letter I begin to be haunted by the idea of having read and experienced many interesting things which I meant to tell you but cannot now bring to mind. One un- interesting thing was being preached to in ‘mine own church’ by little ‘Clarkie’ (the m-yes man).⁶⁷ He is the sort of preacher who calls God ‘gudd’, and soars off into great emotion cadenzas. The matter was good enough, the manner detestable. This morning was the commemoration of the dedication of the church, and why they saw fit to let (or even get) Clark to preach I don’t know: Bathtowel and Thomas being both there.

I had to set a paper for School Certificate the other day on the Clarendon Press selections from Cowper—a ridiculous book for schoolboys.⁶⁸ It includes a large chunk of Bagehot’s Essay on Cowper which makes me think I must read all Bagehot. We have him, haven’t we? Not that I ‘hold with him’, he is too much of a pudaita by half: but he has great fun. ‘Boy—the small pomivorous animal so called.’

      How delicious Cowper himself is—the letters even more than the poetry. Under every disadvantage—presented to me as raw material for a paper and filling with a job an evening wh. I had hoped to have free—even so he charmed me. He is the very essence of what Arthur calls ‘the homely’ which is Arthur’s favourite genre. All these cucumbers, books, parcels, tea-parties, parish affairs. It is wonderful what he makes of them.

      I suppose we may expect a Colombo letter from you soon. I will vary the usual ‘must stop now’ by saying ‘I am going to stop now’. I am writing in the common room (Kilns) at 8.30 of a Sunday evening: a moon shining through a fog outside and a bitter cold night.

      Yours

      Jack

       TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

      [The Kilns]

      Dec 6th 1931

      My dear Arthur,

      Hurrah! I was beginning to feel the want of a word from you. I envy you your stay at Ballycastle, or rather I wish I had been there: I feel I can do so without selfishness because I should have enjoyed the storms better than Reid who doubtless lost through them most of the pleasure he expected to get out of his jaunt.

That is a thing you and I have to be thankful for—the fact that we do not only don’t dislike but positively enjoy almost every kind of weather. We had about three days of dense fog here lately. That was enough to tax even my powers of doing without the sun, but though it became oppressive in the end I felt that it was a cheap price to pay [for] its beauties. There was one evening of mist about three feet deep lying on the fields under the moon—like the mist in the first chapter of Phantastes.⁶⁹ There was a morning (up in the top wood) of mist pouring along the ground through the fir trees, so thick and visible that it looked tangible as treacle. Then there were afternoons of fairly thin, but universal fog, blotting out colour but leaving shapes distinct enough to become generalised—silhouettes revealing (owing to the suppression of detail) all sorts of beauties of grouping that one does not notice on a coloured day. Finally there were days of real fog: days of chaos come again: specially fine at the pond, when the water was only a darker tinge in the fog and the wood on the far side only the ghostliest suggestion: and to hear the skurry of the waterfowl but not to see them. Not only was it an exciting time in itself but by the contrast has made to day even more beautiful than it would have been—a clear, stinging, winter sunshine.

As to Lucius⁷⁰ about the atonement not being in the Gospels, I think he is very probably right. But then nearly everyone seems to think that the Gospels are much later than the Epistles, written for people who had already accepted the doctrines and naturally wanted the story. I certainly don’t think it is historical to regard the Gospels as the original and the rest of the New Testament as later elaboration or accretion-though I constantly find myself doing so. But really I feel more and more of a child in the whole matter.

      I begin to see how much Puritanism counts in your make up—that both the revulsion from it and the attraction back to it are strong elements. I hardly feel either myself and perhaps am apt to forget in talking to you how different your experience and therefore your feeling is. All I feel that I can say with absolute certainty is this: that if you ever feel that the whole spirit and system in which you were brought up was, after all, right and good, then you may be quite sure that that feeling is a mistake (tho’ of course it might, at a given moment—say, of temptation, be present as the alternative to some far bigger mistake).

My reasons for this are 1. That the system denied pleasures to others as well as to the votaries themselves: whatever the merits of self-denial, this is unpardonable interference. 2. It inconsistently kept some worldly pleasures, and always selected the worst ones—gluttony, avarice, etc. 3. It was ignorant. It could give no ‘reason for the faith that was in it’.⁷¹ Your relations have been found very ill grounded