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