15A, WHITTINGTON TERRACE, BAYSWATER
22.10.28
Hullo, Bungie, darling! My God, but I’m played-out! I’ve been sticking
to the accursed _Life_ like a leech, and have finished the religious
outlook. Having ground it out with incredible sweat and travail, I read
it through and thought it so awful that I was in two minds about
chucking the whole thing into the fire. However, I didn’t, but instead
went over and joined Jim in Paris for a week, on his way home, as you
saw by my post-card. We had a mildly riotous time in that cheerful city,
restraining each other in a brotherly way from the more perilous kinds
of exuberance, and reached home feeling fit for anything. I took up the
infernal religious outlook, read it through again, and came to the
conclusion that it was bloody good stuff, after all! So now I am
pressing forward with shouts of joy and encouragement to the critical
estimate, which is the only part of the thing I really want to write at
all. Dilkes, the dear old man, to whom I explained my troubles, talked
to me like fifty fathers, and said extraordinarily nice things. He
thinks, by the way, that the flippant and imaginative kind of biography
has had its day, having been too much imitated, and that the time has
come round again for solid facts and research. “The great humility of
science, in face of the infinite and valuable variety of Truth.” Isn’t
that an exquisite Victorian remark? “We should pray,” said he, making me
feel like a very grubby fourth-form infant, “to be delivered from
cleverness, because very clever people end by finding that nothing is
worth while.” So I said, rather ungraciously, that probably nothing
_was_ worth while, and he gave the funniest twinkle from under his thick
eyebrows and replied: “You must not think that, or you will become a
bore.”
My parson turns out to be rather an enlightened person. It appears he
took a mathematical tripos among other things, which is one up to him.
He also has read Eddington, and, moreover, took it for granted that I
had read Jeans and Japp and one or two other fantastic scientists whose
names I had never heard of, which was two up to him. Also, he seemed
quite delighted about the whole thing, and said he was thankful to find
that scientists would at last allow him to believe what the Church
taught, which in his young days they wouldn’t. I should have put this
down to the usual shifty ecclesiastical clap-trap, but for the obvious
fact that he knew what he was talking about, and I didn’t, so, feeling a
fool, I put a good face on the matter and asked his advice about the
religious outlook chapter. He gave me some really very useful stuff
about Victorian materialism, which you will find in the book when it’s
finished. We ended by discussing, with much laughter, some incredibly
silly letter from correspondents in the _Daily Dispatch_, one of whom
said: “Sir, Genesis says that God made Adam from the dust of the earth.
God is the initial cause and dust is protoplasm. Yours faithfully”;
while the reply observed briefly, “Sir, Dust is not protoplasm, Yours
faithfully.”
Dearest, do you really want to be married to the sort of unsatisfactory
bloke I am? It is extraordinarily brave and dear of you. You will have a
devil of a time. I want to warn you now that when I say I want you to
keep your independence and exquisite detachment, I don’t really mean it.
I shall try to mould you into the mirror of myself, fatally and
inevitably. When I say I am not jealous, either of your work or friends,
I am lying. When I promise to look at things from your point of view, I
am promising what I cannot perform. When I declare myself ready to
discuss everything fully and freely and have a _situation nette_, I am
pretending to be more honest than a man ever is or can be. I shall be
reticent, inconsistent, selfish and jealous. I shall put my interests
before yours, and the slightest suggestion that I should put myself out
to give you peace and quietness to work in will wound my
self-importance. I know it. I shall pretend to give you freedom, and
make such an unholy martyr of myself that you will take up your chains
for the sake of a quiet life. You will end by hating me, and leave me
for some scamp of a fellow who knows how to handle women. And you will
be quite right, from your point of view. I have been trying to look
honestly into the thing, and I want to warn you. You think I am
“different,” but I am not. With all your theoretical knowledge, Bungie,
you haven’t had experience. You are generous, I know, and think you are
willing to risk it, but I must try and make you understand the facts.
Don’t think that I am wanting for one moment to cut our engagement out.
I want you as I have never wanted anything. I want you terribly. But do
try and understand that it won’t be what you think. I don’t want us to
end in a ghastly sort of muddle.
I know you will say that you understand, but you don’t. You have an
idea—all women have—that you can enter into a man’s point of view. You
can’t; any more than I can enter into a woman’s point of view. Don’t,
for God’s sake, tell me to cheer up and it will be all right. Don’t be
sweet and understanding—be brutal, if you like—I shall not take
offence at anything you may say, but I want you to realise what you are
in for.
Yours ever,
JACK
P.S. This is arrant hypocrisy. I am bound to take offence, whatever you
say, and we shall have one of those painful and acrimonious arguments.
If you say nothing, I shall be offended at that, too. But for God’s sake
don’t chuck me, Bungie.