Paddy at 111 - and about 95 years earlier
Today is my father's 111th birthday.
As many of you know, I've posted some of his writing or portraits in previous years.
I was thinking that this year I might use a letter that Paddy wrote to his artist aunt while stationed in Egypt during the Second World War, but so far I haven't managed to find it. What I did come across while searching was a piece of juvenilia, a letter written to his cousin Mary from Rugby School, which was in a packet of a handful that he wrote to her across several decades; I suppose she must have kept these particular items, and her children must have passed them on to my mother after his death. This one is in rhyming couplets, and the second line suggests that they had corresponded before in that style. (His scansion gets a bit suspect in the final stanza.) Paddy dates it in February but doesn't give the year; as he says he's "one form below the sixth" I'm guessing it's about 1920-21, when he'd be sixteen or seventeen, so I've thrown in a portrait of him by said aunt which I imagine was done around that time.
Paddy to Mary
School House
Rugby
Feb. 9th.
Mary, I feel it is an awful time
Since we have sampled one another's rhyme.
It has occurred to me that I had better
Buck myself up and send to you a letter.
I'm writing in my study - small in size:
Ten feet its length, ten feet its walls do rise,
Six feet the breadth. And, though it may seem queer
It's a big study by the standards here!
A wooden chair authority provides,
A table, and a book-cupboard besides.
Myself I own a small armchair, a stool
Collapsible - collapsing as a rule -
A dozen pictures of great variegation,
The best a cart-track through a dark plantation:
The least agreeable is a sickly moon
Over a sickly sea - I'll sell it soon
To anyone who'll take it. Add to these
Four cushions, of sorts, the weary frame to please.
My form at present is the Classic Twenty,
One form below the Sixth. There's work in plenty,
Somewhat too much: the master, Mr. Cole,
Is a disciple of the strenuous school.
The countryside is pretty in some places,
Good enough place for going paper-chases,
Pimples of hills: the streams are dirty grey.
The ponds are - ponds. No more for them I'll say.
One or two little places are worthwhile
To walk to, only once: the town is vile.
εἰθε γενοιμην - would that we two were
In Ambleside, our humble Grantchester!
O'er which are watching the great friendly hills,
Where are no smoky wood-and-sawdust mills,
Where all the streams are clearer than the sky,
Where every tarn has its own dignity,
Where there is not a place for five miles round
That is not everlasting lovely ground,
Where one can take long walks beneath the sky,
Over the moors, and hear the curlew cry,
The bleating sheep, the lonely waterfall,
And the great winds: no other sound at all.
Oh, there it's worthwhile living - even dying
Once more among those mountains to be lying!
Forgive me: I am apt to be carried away:
Wordsworth's good comfort for the present day.
I saw his grave once. I shall not forget it,
I thank the simple taste of him who set it.
Believe me - no, I never could do that trick:
I'll simply sign myself,
your loving
Patrick.
Note: εἰθε γενοιμην (eithe genoimen/would I were) refers to lines from Rupert Brooke's poem The Old Vicarage, Grantchester - "εἰθε γενοιμην... would I were/In Grantchester, in Grantchester!"
Also posted on Dreamwidth, with
comments.
As many of you know, I've posted some of his writing or portraits in previous years.
I was thinking that this year I might use a letter that Paddy wrote to his artist aunt while stationed in Egypt during the Second World War, but so far I haven't managed to find it. What I did come across while searching was a piece of juvenilia, a letter written to his cousin Mary from Rugby School, which was in a packet of a handful that he wrote to her across several decades; I suppose she must have kept these particular items, and her children must have passed them on to my mother after his death. This one is in rhyming couplets, and the second line suggests that they had corresponded before in that style. (His scansion gets a bit suspect in the final stanza.) Paddy dates it in February but doesn't give the year; as he says he's "one form below the sixth" I'm guessing it's about 1920-21, when he'd be sixteen or seventeen, so I've thrown in a portrait of him by said aunt which I imagine was done around that time.
Paddy to Mary
School House
Rugby
Feb. 9th.
Mary, I feel it is an awful time
Since we have sampled one another's rhyme.
It has occurred to me that I had better
Buck myself up and send to you a letter.
I'm writing in my study - small in size:
Ten feet its length, ten feet its walls do rise,
Six feet the breadth. And, though it may seem queer
It's a big study by the standards here!
A wooden chair authority provides,
A table, and a book-cupboard besides.
Myself I own a small armchair, a stool
Collapsible - collapsing as a rule -
A dozen pictures of great variegation,
The best a cart-track through a dark plantation:
The least agreeable is a sickly moon
Over a sickly sea - I'll sell it soon
To anyone who'll take it. Add to these
Four cushions, of sorts, the weary frame to please.
My form at present is the Classic Twenty,
One form below the Sixth. There's work in plenty,
Somewhat too much: the master, Mr. Cole,
Is a disciple of the strenuous school.
The countryside is pretty in some places,
Good enough place for going paper-chases,
Pimples of hills: the streams are dirty grey.
The ponds are - ponds. No more for them I'll say.
One or two little places are worthwhile
To walk to, only once: the town is vile.
εἰθε γενοιμην - would that we two were
In Ambleside, our humble Grantchester!
O'er which are watching the great friendly hills,
Where are no smoky wood-and-sawdust mills,
Where all the streams are clearer than the sky,
Where every tarn has its own dignity,
Where there is not a place for five miles round
That is not everlasting lovely ground,
Where one can take long walks beneath the sky,
Over the moors, and hear the curlew cry,
The bleating sheep, the lonely waterfall,
And the great winds: no other sound at all.
Oh, there it's worthwhile living - even dying
Once more among those mountains to be lying!
Forgive me: I am apt to be carried away:
Wordsworth's good comfort for the present day.
I saw his grave once. I shall not forget it,
I thank the simple taste of him who set it.
Believe me - no, I never could do that trick:
I'll simply sign myself,
your loving
Patrick.
Note: εἰθε γενοιμην (eithe genoimen/would I were) refers to lines from Rupert Brooke's poem The Old Vicarage, Grantchester - "εἰθε γενοιμην... would I were/In Grantchester, in Grantchester!"
Also posted on Dreamwidth, with
comments.