Скачать книгу

      [Gastons

      6? February 1916]

      My dear Papy,

      Thanks very much for the cheque, which I enclose, signed as you told me. I am afraid however that I must trouble you again: one of my pairs of shoes has finally given out ‘beyond the hope of uttermost recall’ and I want you please to get me a new pair, or else tell Annie to do so. The mysterious piece of paper which I am sending is a map of my foot so that the knave in the shop will know what size to give you. I am very sorry if this is a nuisance, and will take care next term to set out well equipped with hats, coats, shoes and other garments, like the men in the furnace.

      And now my dear parent, as the time alloted to correspondence is drawing to its close, I fear I must relinquish–or in other words it is time for Church. You will observe that this is one of those houses where we rise so early on Sundays that there is a long interval between breakfast and our Calvinistic exercises.

      your loving son,

      Jack

       TO ARTHUR GREEVES (LP V: 53-4):

      [Gastons

      8 February 1916]

      My dear Arthur,

      You lucky devil! It makes me very envious to hear of all these good things going on at home while I am languishing in the wilds of Surrey.

      I quite agree with you that a gramophone spoils one for hearing opera: the real difficulty is to find for what a gramophone does not spoil one. True, it improves your musical taste and gives you opportunities of hearing things that you might otherwise never know: but what is the use of that when immediately afterwards it teaches you to expect a standard of performance which you can’t get, or else satiates you with all the best things so that they are stale before you have heard them once on the stage? Or in other words, like everything else it is a disappointment, like every other pleasure it just slips out of your hand when you think you’ve got it. The most striking example of this is the holiday which one looks forward to all the term and which is over and gone while one is still thinking how best to enjoy it.

      By all this you will gather that I am in a bad temper: well, so I am–that bloody little beast my fellow pupil has sneaked upstairs for a bath and I can now hear him enjoying it and I know there will be no hot water left for me. They only raise hot water here about once a month.

      By the way, why is your letter dated Wednesday? It has arrived here this evening–Tuesday–am I to understand that you posted it tomorrow, or that you have been carrying it about in your pocket for a week?

      Yours,

      Jack

       TO HIS FATHER (LP V: 56-7):

      [Gastons]

      Postmark: 26 February 1916

      My dear Papy,

      There

Скачать книгу