short. I am very grateful to you. Would not that be a nice epitaph—“He
never disappointed”? Well, it is true of you.
Your idea of the short poems is perfect and I have already learned some.
Nesta is excellent company, but I fear she is giving me more time than it
is fair to take. Every now and then, when she is apparently looking at
me, I can see that her glance is really fixed on her children, many miles
off. The far-away nursery look.
It is _almost_ worth being ill to discover how kind people can be. If
it is true (and of course it is) that to give pleasure to others is the
greatest happiness, then I can comfort myself, as I lie here apparently
useless, that I have my uses after all, since I am the cause of that
happiness in so many of my friends.—Yours,
V.
XXXII
RICHARD HAVEN TO VERENA RABY
DEAREST VERENA, your testimonial gave me extraordinary pleasure, and I
wish it was true.
I don’t say, in spite of your charming piece of altruistic reasoning,
that you are lucky to be in bed, but to have to remain in a remote rural
spot while England is getting herself into order again is not a bad
thing. For it is a slow and rather unlovely process. Just at the moment
War seems, as one remembers it (and of course I speak only of England,
not of the Front), a more desirable condition than Peace. There is no
doubt that the country is a fit place for Profiteeroes to live in.
I felt sure that you knew Clifford’s excellent nonsense for the young. As
you don’t know it, you shall; but not yet! A surprise is brewing.
With the steady assistance of my invaluable Miss Faith and her little
Corona (which is not, alas! a cigar, but a typewriter) I have amassed
already a collection of brief poems such as may gently occupy your
thoughts in the wakeful sessions of the night. These I shall dole out to
you, one by one, for you to take or leave as you feel “dispoged.” I have
not gone beyond my own shelves, but if ever I find myself with the run of
somebody else’s no doubt I shall find many more, probably equally good or
even better. We might call it the _Tabloid Treasury_ when it is ready?
Having sent you the other day all those elegiac efforts, I am now
copying out three or four short poems where the poets take stock and
prepare to put up the shutters, and here again the quality is high. The
most famous example is, of course, Landor’s:
I strove with none, for none was worth my strife;
Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art;
I warmed both hands before the fire of life;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.
But Landor had a predecessor who said much the same in a homelier manner:—
My muse and I, ere youth and spirits fled,
Sat up together many a night, no doubt:
But now I’ve sent the poor old lass to bed,
Simply because my fire is going out.
Stevenson must have had Landor’s lines in mind when he made this summary
of his own career:—
I have trod the upward and the downward slope;
I have endured and done in days before;
I have longed for all, and bid farewell to hope;
And I have lived and loved, and closed the door.
A final example, from the French of the Abbé Regnier:—
Gaily I lived as ease and nature taught,
And spent my little life without a thought,
And am amazed that Death, that tyrant grim,
Should think of me, who never thought of him.
Don’t be afraid; in future I shall send you only one poem at a time.
R. H.
XXXIII
HORACE MUN-BROWN TO VERENA RABY
DEAR AUNT,—If I have from time to time bothered you with my financial
schemes I am very sorry. But I have an active brain, and too few briefs.
Also I want to be in a sound financial position, and, under more
favourable circumstances, most of my projects would, I am sure, succeed.
But you are the only capitalist that I know, and just at the moment
you are, I now realize, not in a position to take any deep interest
in monetary ventures. I ought to have thought of this before, and I
apologise.
I write to you to-day for a very different purpose and that is, to
enlist not your bank balance but your sympathy and, I hope, active help.
In a nutshell, I want to marry Hazel. I have laid my case before her more
than once, but she refuses to take me seriously. I am aware that I am not
so superficially gay and insouciant as the majority of the young men of
to-day; I know only too well that I cannot jazz and that I prefer dances
where an intervening atmospheric space divides the partners. But, though
I may be old-fashioned, surely I have compensating qualities of value in
married life. What I feel is that if only Hazel could be persuaded that I
am in deadly earnest, and that marriage is not one of—what she calls—my
“wild-cat schemes,” she would begin to look upon me with a new eye. I am
very human _au fond_, dear Aunt, and, in my own way, I adore Hazel. Would
you not try to persuade her to be more kind and understanding?—I am, your
affectionate nephew,
HORACE MUN-BROWN
_P.S._—On reading this letter through, I find that I have made what looks
rather like a pun—that passage about Hazel and a nutshell. I assure you,
my dear Aunt, it was unintentional. I should never joke about love.
XXXIV
RICHARD HAVEN TO VERENA RABY
MY DEAR, I have found you a Reader, but I hate to part with her. It
would not, however, do for anyone so young and comely to sit at the
bedside of a hale man of my years, and so you shall have her. But O her
voice! Irish, and south-west Irish at that. In point of fact, Kerry, with
hints of the Gulf Stream in it, all warm and caressing.
Miss Clemency Power—that is her pretty name—is not, I take it, in any
kind of need, but she worked all through the War and wants to continue
to be independent. And quite right too, say I. And Robbie Burns said it
before me, in one of his English efforts:—
the glorious privilege
of being independent,
he called it.
Miss Power is going to you on Thursday on a month’s probation, and she is
my gift to you, remember: I have arranged it all. It is very Sultanic to
be distributing young women like this, and you must be properly grateful.
I was never Sultanic before.
Here’s a nice thing my sister Violet’s charwoman said yesterday. Violet
seems to have been looking rather more wistful than usual, but for no
particular reason. The charwoman, however, noticed it and commented upon
it.
“You look very sad this morning,” she said. “But then,” she added,
“ladies generally do.”
“Why is that?” Violet asked.
“They have such difficult lives,” she said. “It’s their husbands, I
think.”
“But you have a husband.”
“Yes, but we don’t notice our husbands as much as you do. They come in
and they’re cross and they swear, and we let them. We’ve got our work to
get on with. But with ladies it’s different; they take notice.”
Your daily poem:—
He who bends to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sunrise.
If you trap the moment before it’s ripe
The tears of repentance you’ll certainly wipe;
But if once you let the ripe moment go,
You can never wipe off the tears of woe.
A lot of wisdom there, but for most of us, who are so far from being
children, rather a counsel of perfection.—Good night.
R. H.
_P.S._—A travelling friend tells me that outside the gate of the
Misericordia, in Osaka, Japan, is this notice, the meaning of which is
clear after a moment’s examination: “The sisters of the Misericordia
harbour every kind of disease and have no respect for religion.”
XXXV
CLEMENCY POWER TO THE HON. MRS. POWER
DEAREST MOTHER,—I have got a job at last—the least like a War job that
you could imagine. I have been engaged to read for an hour or so every
day to a Miss Raby, a lady who owing to an accident has to lie still for
months and months. After all my adventures in France this is a great
change.
Miss Raby lives near Kington in Herefordshire, a long way from London
and indeed a long way from anywhere, but it is fine country and there are
splendid hills to walk on, Hargest Ridge in particular, where the air is
the most bracing I ever knew, and you look over to the Welsh mountains.
She has an old spacious house in its own grounds, but I am lodging with
one of the villagers; which I greatly prefer. Miss Raby has a nurse, and
one of her nieces, a Mrs. Rossiter, who is charming, is with her. I am a
sort of extra help and am gradually being allowed to do more and more and
now have had the picking of the flowers entrusted to me.
Miss Raby herself is the sweetest creature, a kind of ideal aunt. She is
somewhere in the forties, I suppose, and had a very full life, in a quiet
way, before she was ill, and she is very brave in bearing her inactivity,
which must be terribly irksome at times and especially in very fine
weather. I am here nominally to read, but we talk most of the time, and
she is never tired of hearing about the War and all my experiences. She
knows the part of the garden that every flower comes from, and I think
her greatest joy every day is her interview with the gardener.
One thing I have discovered is how very few books bear reading aloud. The
authors don’t think of that when they are writing and so the words are
wrongly placed. Another thing is that books that are silly anyway are
heaps sillier when read aloud.
I ought to say that although I am in Miss Raby’s service (don’t wince)
she is not my employer—I was engaged by a Mr. Haven, her oldest friend,
who has presented me to her!—Your loving
C.
XXXVI
VERENA RABY TO RICHARD HAVEN
DEAREST RICHARD,—I like the woman thou gavest me very much and rejoice in
her brogue, and I am very grateful to you, always. Tell me more about the
state of things. I can bear it.—Yours,
V.
XXXVII
VERENA RABY TO HAZEL BARRANCE
DEAREST HAZEL,—I have had a rather pathetic letter from poor Horace,
who, after long wooing you in vain, comes to me (I hope this isn’t
betraying his confidence: I don’t think it is really) as a new legal
Miles Standish. Young men at the Bar are not usually so ready to seek
other mouthpieces, are they? Not those, at any rate, next to whom I used
to sit at dinner parties in the days when I was well and now and then
came to London.
Of course, my dear child, I am not going to interfere. To be quite
candid, I don’t want you to marry Horace. I think you would condemn
yourself to a very stuffy kind of existence if you did, and I am
against first-cousins marrying in any case. But his appeal gives me an
opportunity of saying what I have more than once wished, and that is that
you would revise your general attitude to marriage. Again and again in
your letters to me I have detected a bitterness about it, the suggestion
that because some couples have fallen out, all must sooner or later do
so. This isn’t true. But even if it were, it ought not to deter us, for
all of us must live our own lives, and make our own experiments, and
all of us ought to believe that we are the great splendid triumphant
exceptions! It is that belief—I might almost call it religion—which I
miss in you and which seems to be now so generally lacking. Put on low
grounds it might be called the gambling spirit, but it is a form of
gambling in which there is no harm, but rather virtue. I often wish that
I had had more of it, but I was unfortunate in having my affections so
enchained by one who too little knew his mind, nor sufficiently valued
his captive, that I was never free to consider offers.
Marriage may always be a lottery and often turn out disastrously, and
even more often be a dreary curtailment of two persons’ liberty, but it
is a natural proceeding and, unless one utterly denies any purpose in
life, a necessary one; and I am all in favour of young people believing
in it. I wish that you were braver and healthier about it, but I don’t
want you to become Mrs. Horace Mun-Brown, and I am telling him so.
This is the longest letter I have written since I took to my bed; indeed
I believe it is the longest I ever wrote.—Your loving
AUNT V.
XXXVIII
SEPTIMUS TRIBE TO VERENA RABY
MY DEAR SISTER,—I was grieved to learn from a third party that you are
no better; indeed rather worse. Letitia and I were hoping that every
day showed improvement. In the possibility that one deterrent cause may
be too much thought, it has occurred to us that the presence in the
house, to be called upon whenever needed, of a soothing voice, might
be a great solace and aid. Such a voice transmitting the words of the
poets, the philosophers or even the romancers, could not but distract
the mind of the listener from her own anxieties and gradually induce
repose. Letitia, to whom I have been reading for some years, will tell
you—with more propriety than I can—how melodious and sonorous an organ is
mine. You have but to say the word and it is at your service.—I am, your
affectionate brother-in-law,
SEPTIMUS TRIBE
XXXIX
ANTOINETTE ROSSITER TO HER MOTHER
DEAREST MUMMY,—When you come home you will find another baby here, only
it isn’t a real baby, it’s a puppy. A spaniel. Mr. Hawkes gave it to us
and he says we are to own it together so that each of us has a bit. He
says I am to have its stomach and mouth, which means I have got to feed
it, and Cyril is to have its front legs and ears, and Lobbie its hind
legs and tail, and its tongue is to belong to us all. I have told Cyril
that you and Daddy ought to have an ear each but he won’t give them up.
The ears of a spaniel are the nicest part, next to the lips. It is a girl
and Mr. Hawkes says that this means that when it grows up it will be
fondest of Cyril. We have named it Topsy because it is a girl and black.
Do come home soon and see it.—Your everlastingly loving
TONY
x x x x x x
x x x x
XL
NESTA ROSSITER TO SEPTIMUS TRIBE
DEAR UNCLE SEPTIMUS,—Aunt Verena asks me to thank you for your kind
offer, but to say that a trained reader has already been secured. With
love to Aunt Letitia,—I am, yours sincerely,
NESTA ROSSITER
XLI
HAZEL BARRANCE TO VERENA RABY
DEAR AUNT,—You were the kindest thing to write to me like that. Such a
long letter too! I hope you weren’t too tired after it. But, alas! the
pity is it has not converted me. Marriage for every one else if you like,
but not for me. I have seen too much of it, nor do I seem to want any of
the things it gives except escape from home. But it would be escaping
only to another form of bondage. Every one is not made for domesticity
and I am sure I am not. I hate everything to do with the preparation
of meals. I even rather hate meals themselves and would much prefer to
eat only when I felt hungry, a little at a time and fairly often and
alone. The idea of munching for evermore punctually and periodically
opposite the same man both repels and infuriates me. I wonder if you can
understand this. The thought of Horace under these conditions is too
revolting.
Since I wrote to you Horace has actually been to father, behind my
back; but father is much too pleased with my likeness to himself to be
unsporting, and Horace was sent away with the warning that he hadn’t an
earthly—but if he cared to persist he must come to me direct and to no
one else. He would have gone to mother for a cert if she had not been so
wholly occupied with the affairs of the next world.
Father was really funny about it. “What does Horace want to marry for,
anyway?” he said: “he knows how to speak French”—this referring to his
old theory that what men most want in wives is a gift of tongues when
travelling abroad.
But apart from not wanting to marry, marriage frightens me. It means
losing the fine edge of courtesy and kindness and tenderness. I see
so many married people—girls I knew when they were engaged—one or two
to whom I was bridesmaid and they are all so coarsened by it and take
things so for granted. I don’t think anything is sadder than the way
in which little pretty indulged sillinesses when a girl is engaged,
become detestable in her husband’s eyes after they are married. Losing
umbrellas, for example.
That’s the end of my grumbling about marriage. This correspondence, as
the editors say, must now cease, and henceforth I will write only when I
have something cheerful and amusing to tell you. I have been selfishly
using you far too long.—Your loving
HAZEL
XLII
RICHARD HAVEN TO VERENA RABY
MY DEAR, I am delighted to hear about my Irish girl. Some day I should
like to be ill myself—nicely, languidly ill, without pain—just for the
pleasure of having her read to me.
I hope you aren’t letting the papers prey on your mind. Far better not
read them, or, rather, not hear them read; but I expect that is to
suggest too much. After a great war there must always be a period of
ferment and unrest, and that is what we are undergoing now. I don’t in
the least despair of cosmos emerging, but nothing will ever be the same
again and it will be a very expensive chaos for years to come.
What chiefly worries me is the impaired standard of efficiency, the
scamping, the cheating and the general cynicism. I seem to discern
a universal decrease of pride. The best, the genuine, has gone, and
substitutes reign. Tradespeople no longer keep their word and are
impenitent when taxed with it. A certain amount of dishonesty must, I
suppose, be bred of a war. Officers, for example, had to be fed and
couldn’t be expected to inquire too closely of their batmen where the
chickens came from, and no doubt a good deal of this bivouacking morality
persists. But I wish it hadn’t affected life so generally. I rather fancy
that what this old England of ours is most in need of is a gentleman at
the helm. A nobleman would not be bad, but a gentleman would be better.
No harm if he were rich and could win the Derby. But where to find him?
He is a gift of the gods, to be proffered or withheld according to their
whim or their interest in old England. If they are tired of us (as now
and then one can almost fear), then we may never get him.—Yours,
R. H.
And here is to-day’s poem, a very brief one but a very striking one too:—
Reason has moons, but moons not hers
Lie mirror’d on the sea,
Confounding her astronomers,
But, O! delighting me.
XLIII
VERENA RABY TO HAZEL BARRANCE
MY DEAR HAZEL,—My last letter too, on this subject, but you must answer
it. There is much in yours with which I sympathize and I think I
understand all of it. There is a vein of almost fierce fastidiousness in
our family (your grandfather had too much of it) which is discernible in
you, but I don’t despair of seeing a deal of it broken down when you meet
the right man. So much of what you say about things seems to me to be due
to your manlessness. I don’t believe that any wholly right view of life
is possible to celibates or those who have never loved. They must see it
piecemeal. I don’t despair of you at all, but you must get out of the
habit of expecting perfection. And where would the fun of marriage be if
it was not partly warfare—give and take?—Your truly loving and solicitous
AUNT V.
_P.S._—Don’t stop writing about yourself if you have any prompting to.
What is an old bed-ridden woman for but to try and help others?
XLIV
PATRICIA POWER TO CLEMENCY POWER
YOU DEAR LUCKY CLEM,—I am so glad you are fixed up all comfy and I wish
I could do the same, but Herself won’t hear of it. She says that one mad
daughter out in the world when there is no need for it is enough. I can’t
make her see that it isn’t the money that matters, but the importance of
doing something for the sake of one’s own dignity. All the same, some
one must of course stay with her. I’m sure that if I were to go, Adela
wouldn’t stick it another minute. But remember me if you ever hear of an
opening or if this Mr. Haven of yours is proposing to distribute any more
damsels among his friends.
Herself has been very fit lately and we’ve got two more Dexters—such
pets. One is named Dilly and the other Dally, but that’s not their
nature. We liked the names for them, that’s all. So far from being their
nature, they give quarts of milk.
We went over to the Pattern at Kilmakilloge last week in the motor-boat,
but Tim wouldn’t let us stay long because the boys were out with their
shillelaghs and he was fearful of a fight. But it was great fun. Dr.
O’Connor was there with his new wife, very massive and handsome, and he
was so comically proud of her, and Mr. Sheehan was as mischievous as
ever and even invited us to play lawn tennis at Derreen by moonlight.
It would have been funny if we had and Lord Lansdowne had turned up. We
walked round the lake once, with the cripples, and gave shillings to I
don’t know how many beggars, and then Tim forced us away. Every one was
jigging then, except those who were singing in the inn. Good night, lucky
one.—Your only
PAT
_P.S._—This did not get off last night and now I re-open it to say that
I am enclosing a letter which arrived this morning and has all the
appearance of being the handiwork of a beau. I like the writing, so
decisive and distinct.
P.
XLV
BRYAN FIELD TO CLEMENCY POWER
[_Enclosure_]
DEAR MISS POWER,—I promised I would let you know when I was returning
to England. Well, I am due next week, for the hospital is closing. I
suppose you don’t know of a nice snug little practice in a good sporting
neighbourhood with several wealthy _malades imaginaires_ of both sexes
dotted conveniently about? That’s what I want, a kind of sinecure.
Forgive the low ambition. Indeed I am punished already for indulging it,
for see how double-edged the word “sinecure” is, and what a sarcasm on my
profession!
Having had one or two letters to you returned as “gone away” I have sent
this to your home address to be forwarded. I hope you did not think that
I should let you go, having once found you! The skies are not so lavish
with their blessings as that! No, begob! I shall be very unhappy until an
answer comes to this.—Yours sincerely,
BRYAN FIELD
XLVI
HAZEL BARRANCE TO VERENA RABY
MY DEAR AUNT,—Just one more word, then!—but only to say it’s no good, I
can’t agree with you. The idea of marriage being necessarily warfare is
utterly repugnant to me, and unless a miracle happens I shall continue to
go on doing my best to be happy though single. I see no reason whatever
for people to scrap, and those who like it always fill me with a kind of
disgust. Married life should be all friendliness and niceness. I feel
so strongly about married happiness that I believe if I were asked to
name my favorite poem in all poetry I should give the old epitaph on the
husband who so quickly followed his wife to the grave:
She first deceased; he for a little tried
To live without her, liked it not, and died.
No news of Horace for quite a long time. I suspect him of searching
London for an apothecary of the Romeo and Juliet type who can provide
love-philtres and I shall look at my drink very narrowly the next time he
dines here or I meet him out. It would be like him to put a love-philtre
on the market.—Your loving
H.
XLVII
CLEMENCY POWER TO BRYAN FIELD
DEAR DOCTOR,—It was very nice of you to write and I am sorry that I
missed those other letters. If you kept them, please send them on. I am
now in a very different employment from that which I had when we used to
meet. I am reader to an invalid lady—not, I hope, a permanent invalid,
and most emphatically not one of your desired _malades imaginaires_—who
lives in a beautiful house in Herefordshire. My duties are not confined
to reading aloud but comprise a hundred other things and I am very happy.
I don’t say that I don’t often regret those rough jolly boys, but one
could not wish the War to last longer just for one’s own entertainment. I
wonder how some of our old friends are—that poor Madame La Touche, does
she still carry round the bill of damage done and horses taken which the
Germans some day are to pay? And old Gaston, are his repentances and good
resolutions any more binding? How long ago it all seems, and, though so
real, how like a dream! I hope you will find a practice to your mind, but
I am sure you don’t really want an idle one. I know too much about your
zealous way with sick and wounded men ever to believe that.—I am, yours
sincerely,
CLEMENCY POWER
_P.S._—What does “begob” mean? I don’t understand foreign languages.
XLVIII
LOUISA PARRISH TO VERENA RABY
MY DEAR VERENA,—I was glad to have your niece’s letter saying that you
are progressing nicely. I am so afraid of those falls, and you never know
even when you feel well again whether there may not be some underlying
trouble to break out again at any moment. We shall all pray that nothing
of the kind will happen to you. I can’t help wishing that you had the
advantage of being attended by our dear Dr. Courage. He is so clever and
kind and thoughtful.