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The ultimate mystery to me is the
way the
on which to exercise your noble pen in the columns of the
Evening Post, here is a chance for you. I don't believe I've got
it on the same day in the week more than three or four
times since I got here. In the first month or so I gathered
that Thursday was the normal day for it to arrive, since
when it has come on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday &
Saturday — once it came on the preceding Tuesday, but
on the other occasions about from two to five days late.
What happens this week? I hadn't had a mail since my
last Saturday in
on Wednesday expecting to see "Incoming Mails : Tomorrow.
in on Friday. "Saturday
I leap out of bed & tear downstairs to the hall table. Nothing.
I get into a tube & blow down to the Bank of
cheque (b) to look for mail. Notice up "
on S Monday
happens to be with me he draws his hat down over his
ears & walks hurriedly in the other direction. Luckily for
the boy's morals he rarely is. Then last night as we were
all (personnel to be explained later) tailing out of the door
hall-stand addressed to me — from
I can understand it, bad weather in the
withstanding. I see that the
made arrangements to send mails via
offers a better dispatch, & it certainly seems about time.
Still if you have an overmastering desire to enter into
public controversy I daresay you could get a tick or two
out of the Post. The net result yesterday was that I went
along to
very flash edition of
twenty four wood engravings by
W. Berry, one of three hundred copies( Nos 51 — 350) printed on Van
Elsder paper & bound in blue buckram. Orders may be sent through
a Bookseller or direct to R. Ashwin Maynard, at the Gregynog
Press, Newtown, Montgomeryshire. I asked the cove in
declined, so I had to fork out. I've been considering it since
the beginning of December. It is a very beautiful book. It
appears that two rich Welsh sisters having cash to play
around with, want to publish fine editions of Welsh authors,
so they have got this press going. Most of it is in English.
They have published a hummer
good Vaughan, which I hadn't seen till yesterday, & which
I may get some day. The trouble is that books are so
darn expensive, the ones you want. There is a great book
out on climbing, On High Hills by
Times Book Club sale; but cripes, the state of 9/10 of the books
you see there makes you think that the bourgeoisie who can
afford the
proletariat, & use their
or the table or to throw at the cat just as frequently. Or pour
water or their beer & spread jam over the cover with quite
as much impartiality. You see it is not much use
having dilettante tastes, wherever you live. You ask
Daddy & see if he doesn't bear me out. Which reminds
me; quite a long time ago
every appearance of extreme joy that her parents in law
to be had given the young bride & bridegroom £50.
Now I recollect that you gave Geoffrey the same amount
so if this is going to be a habit of yours why not send
me the cheque right away? It would come in very
handy during the next year or so; while if you wait
till some unscrupulous girl trips me up & smothers
me what would be the use of it? This is an aspect
of the question very well worth thinking over, I think.
Auntie might like to do the same thing with her cheque, not
to mention
I reckon I have saved over Keith's wedding — I told
I would give the young couple a quid to do what they
liked with; she said (she appeared to be a bit peeved
with me) that she would never lower herself so far as to take
a penny let alone a quid from my hands for herself, but
have to allow him to take it. Well, I don't see
to me to set up M matrimony, him so young too,
when I am struggling for dear life in a foreign land; so
I reckon that's a £1 saved. You can't say I didn't offer
them a wedding-present & a generous one too; so you needn't
start slinging off any moral back chat at me when
you answer this as to what's done & what's not done.
Bourgeois morality. Me &
ourself from all that stuff.
The weather has been a bit more wintry lately, & we
have even had snow, which has looked very nice lying
in the squares, but less nice after ten minutes traffic
along the road, or when you bg begin to skid over the steps
of the house. We went out to Golder's Green & Carmen the
other night; the theatre is next door to the Tube Station, but
there is a bit of inclined pavement between the two; about 11.30
we started to traverse this, when the night was nice &
freezing; when whoosh! my feet shot from under me
& my centre of gravity after remaining quite poised in the air
for a sickening second thudded to the ground — Duncan turned
round to say Well, what the —! when his feet also
suddenly fled from under him. However with immense
effort of coordination of brain & muscle he managed to
regain them, so the incident was robbed of its logical
climax. But the British were ever an illogical race, as
Dean Inge remarks with great acuteness & originality.
public, & the mark of a noble mind to do so ungrudgingly.
Well, that's me. What you say of my early upbringing
(in connection with our house-motto) I regard as profoundly
true. Give to the uttermost & expect nothing back. You don't
get anything anyhow. We have had fogs too & mists without
number & rain & sleet & smoke &
fogs are funny some times. I came back to the house one
lunch time last week to get a paper I forgot;
been very clear all the morning along the Museum way
but coming along Guilford St, a few yards away from
here I could see a solid bank of fog over all this district
cut off quite sharply from the clear air like this;
been foggy like that here all the morning, the women who
cleans the place told me. Then a very light wind started
to blow, & five minutes afterwards I walked back to
the museum practically in black night. When I got
to the M,there was fog all round, but standing in
the courtyard I looked up & clear sky. So what do you
make of that? Fair dinkum, it's a queer country; the
people are queer & their customs are queer & their
weather's queer. It's all very strange.
I have had a pretty busy fortnight, which accounts
for my writing desperately in the last two or three days
before the mail closes — the confounded thing always
closes with clockwork regularity — at 2am on
nesday
all, I have had a full measure of concerts etc. I hardly
ever seem to have time to do any reading; about a book
a fortnight is my average — I have been reading C.E.
Montague's The Right Place & jolly good too, & have been
week getting half-way through it; I bet even Daddy couldn't
beat that. Oh I had better say with regard to work, that Newton
improves a lot on acquaintance; he is a great teacher, I think,
with an extraordinary range of knowledge, & he puts it across
well. He can be darned nasty if he likes, but he always
plains
He is a lot more use to a cove than Pollard, anyhow. The
only
admires; I'd feel sorry for old F.P. is he got into Newton's
seminar for ½ hour. Most of us are colonials or yanks
too; the English high-brow girls I have met give me the pip,
& the men on the whole aren't much of an improvement;
give me a Boer or an Aussie any day.
To get back to the important things of life: The British
National Opera Company (herinafter referred to as the B.N.
O.C.) has been having a fortnight's run out at Golder's
Green, with practically a different opera every night.
Such were the exigencies of circumstance that I couldn't go
at all the first
night week, but last Monday I went to
the Mastersingers, which was very good. They don't go
in for highly-paid stars, but the general ensemble &
presentation is as good as anything you're likely to get
modest introduction to Wagner. It started at ¼ past 7 &
finished
here both the high regard I have for quality & the passionate
lust for quantity which animates me. On Tuesday I
was somewhere else; on Wednesday I wanted to go to the
Marriage of Figaro, but stayed home instead to do some
German, a fiendish language which leads me to a very
simple & satisfying explanation of why the Germans lost
the war — the poor cows couldn't communicate with one
another. Then on Thursday the
concert on at the
the Halle Choir down to do Berlioz's Requiem, in addition
to which he had an orchestra of 150 & four brass bands.
I think you have read
needn't say anything about the thing. Cripes! when the
brass bands all got together in the Tuba Mirum it was
worth hearing! These brass players were all picked from
crack north country bands, too. The choir was first-rate,
with a first-rate soloist for the solitary solo, Tudor Davies.
The rest of the programme was
Harty has made a speciality, finishing up with the good
old Rakoczy March; with brass once more to the fore. In
the orchestra for this 2nd half he had 13 trumpets, 9
trombones, 14 doublebasses, & twelve drums, while I couldn't
be bothered counting such things as cellos & fiddles. And all
playing as one man too. This is the real stuff.
finished up by paying 3/- to stand at the back of the pit.
ever
Carmen herself was more of a big fat lump, to quote the
White Headed Boy than she should have been. The great
Eugene Goosens
notable for the aforementioned exercise in skating. Last
night was supposed to be Tannhauser. We met the Beebes
a dago chophouse in Soho, one Poggioli's, & invited them round
to tea on toasted crumpets provided by us, & custard tart kindly
contributed by
Beebes who told me about Poggioli's; you can occasionally get
a jolly good feed there for 1/-; but whatever you get you get
plenty of it & well-cooked. The
& two plates. Beebe has improved a bit, & there is nothing
wrong with Beatrice B. Well, we had a terrific burst on
crumpets (14 for Gd), though it made great inroads on our
butter, & then all trailed up to Euston to tube it out to Golder's
Green. And then when we got there they had changed the bill to
Faust & there wasn't a seat to be had in the place. Nevertheless a
queue had formed up outside the gods door — these pathetic
English queues! As soon as an Englishman sees a door in
a large building he automatically stands outside it and waits, &
other people come & stand behind him in the most patient,
well-organised, well-bred way, without seemingly knowing or
caring in the least what they are waiting for. And the
fools who ran the show hadn't the sense to put out a house full
jammed in the porch & struggling to get into the expensive seats; &
then stood round in the snow & argued about what we'd do next;
which ended in our piling into the tube for Tottenham Court
Rd, emerging from whence we drew lots to see who should have
the deciding voice in what to do. McGrath won & was going
to take us to some picture he'd seen & was raving about,
when I said with one of my usual brain-waves, I'll tell
you what, the Criterion doesn't start till 8.40; Let's all
go to the White Bearded Boy; so we all piled into a bus &
dashed down the
to
in which the Criterion Theatre & the Criterion
ant
are situated found our way into the pit & all for 3/-.
And by jingo! it was a good play. Of course you have
it at home, but I don't think I've ever seen better
acting — it was pretty well all perfectly done. I must
say I'm darn sorry you & Daddy can't see some of
these plays. Pygmalion started a season last week,
&
the papers) revival of
ments
we hope to get all these three done in the next fortnight
plus a considerable number of concerts & lectures. It was
the Irish Players
St-Martin-in-the-Fields has been putting over some
good stuff lately, too. Yesterday their choral society gave
the organ & made me wildly excited — I haven't been to
any organ-recitals yet, but must work in some soon.
The Saturday before they had one of the crack pianists, Myra
Hess, giving a recital & great stuff it was too — a French
suite by
Fugue, which you know quite well, & then the Sunken
Cathedral & some modern Spanish stuff & another bit of
a transcription by herself of one of the chorales. She is
good. So much I think for past concerts, though I have
got about four more ticked off for next week, including
the
are going to play all Beethoven's quartets in honour of
his centenary. There is a great exhibition of Flemish
& Belgian art at the
soon; & they are running a small supplementary exhibition
at the Museum of Flemish illuminated
glorious things; it would be worth a cove's while to take a
trip to
room full of such things & next door to it one full of
autograph letters of celebrated kings & authors & other
inals
famous books & early printed books & so on & so forth ad-
my way to & from the newspaper room in the
I have been working for two or three days, so you see
that the earnest researcher's road is not entirely free from
pitfalls. In connection with all this art I may say
that I am now sitting to McGrath for my portrait — the
one I sent out he did in about 5 mins, so you had
better not judge of his abilities from that. He is an
erratic cove in the extreme when it comes to doing any
work, but after considering most of the schools of
ture
quate
him to practical bricklaying & plumbing at the Brixton
school of building. Duncan continues to strike the dinkum
oil at the
is another Fabian series of lectures in progress now at
Thursday between G.K.C &
the chair; I have been dragged into what calls itself a
study-circle on the Pan Europa scheme organised by the
at Toynbee Hall, though I stayed away this afternoon to
get this letter off my chest on view of the many calls
on my time during the next week. Meanwhile the
air is filling with fog once more, & although the days
are getting perceptibly longer, all I can see as I look
out of the window now is dark dirtiness, with one street-
square. Also my feet have gone very cold, so I think I
shall stop. I shall be able to finish when I get your
letter tomorrow. If it comes.
plus the Old Clay Patch, for which many thanks — I was very
glad to see it. You seem to be having a pretty fine time
together,
them. No doubt you are well through
probably well into Gibbon; so that's
will be one more chance for
your intellectual pride to manifest itself. I suppose you
put a hairpin in at every second page to mark something
for me to read out of sheer force of habit. Well, I'm thinking
of going out and buying a 5 bob
the whole lot, just to score off you this time. No, I haven't
been along to see Old J.M. Robertson yet, but I dare say I shall
make time before long. You don't know what a busy man
I am. Every day & every night booked up this week & here I am
writing for dear life at my mail all tonight. I have just
heard that the
week ago for the G.K.C. debate; so that sets me free on Thursday
for an exciting concert at the Queen's Hall. You see the
fearful choices I have to make. Nothing much else to comment
on in your letters, though all very interesting. Glad Daddy liked
my Coming Home. I see by this
he owes me CASH. I should like to know the secret history of the
business.