ur method of
procedure, which is to put it very mildly rather casual. Your
degree was not so good as it ought to have been, but I did not
reproach you, because in the Consular Service you had chosen a
career which did not call specially for a first. At the same time
you could, if you had worked, have got a first quite easily. Your
six months with the Macedonian Relief people seems to have knocked
all your consular ambitions on the head rather too easily, I
confess, to make me feel very happy about your future. And now
without consulting me you take a house in the country for the
purpose of writing poetry! You imply in answer to my remonstrances
that I am unable to appreciate the "necessity" for your step. That
may be, but I cannot help asking where you would be now if I at
your age, instead of helping my father with his school, had gone
off to Oxfordshire to write poetry. Perhaps I had ambitions to
make a name for myself with the pen. If I had, I quenched them in
order to devote myself to what I considered my duty. I do not
reproach you for refusing to carry on the school at Fox Hall. Your
dear mother's last request was that I should not urge you to be a
schoolmaster, unless you were drawn to the vocation. Her wishes I
have respected, and I repeat that I am not hurt at your refusal.
At the same time I cannot encourage what can only be described as
this whim of yours to bury yourself in a remote village where,
having saddled yourself with the responsibilities of a house, you
announce your intention of living by poetry! I am the last person
to underestimate the value of poetry, but as a livelihood it seems
to me as little to be relied upon as the weather. However, you are
of age. You have L150 a year of your own. You are with the
exercise of the strictest economy independent. And this brings me
to the point of your last letter in which you ask me to supplement
your own income with an allowance of L150 a year from me. This
inclination to depend upon your father is not what I conceive to
be the artist's spirit of independence. This overdrawing upon your
achievement fills me with dismay for the future. However, since I
do not wish you to begin hampered by debt and as you assure me
that you have spent all your own money on this idiotic house, I
will