H.M.S. ‘High Tide’

c/o G.P.O. London

Aug. 5th (no year given)

My Dear Stella,

All day long, I have been saying – ‘this evening I shall write to Stella.’

I make no apologies for failing to write to you sooner. There is no specific reason for such laxity; you know that the times I write to someone out of a sense of duty are practically nil. I get a hunch to write (I write at least one letter a day) and I think I’d like to write to so-and-so, and it all depends on the way I feel to whom I write.

So that often letters are left outstanding for some time. Regrettable, I admit. About five weeks ago I had an urge to write to Mollie. This I did and at great length, but that was the last I sent to her. I still await the required mood to write again.

As I was saying, I had a hunch to write to you today. Now that the time is opportune, the whole mood for writing has gone. Due perhaps to the present atmosphere that pervades the messdeck. Half a dozen card players hold thrall. They got to the table before me and I’m left with a square foot to write in. A card school always has priority over a mere pen pusher.

Due perhaps to the fact that this is the first day of the four ‘on station’ and my mind is restless.

Here I broke off for some hours – about 24 hours to be almost precise. In the interval the only exciting thing that happened was at dawn this morning. Dawn these days, if you don’t know already, is between five and six. The weather all night had been atrocious. T o you ashore it would appear to be merely windy. But, anchored as we are outside the breakwater we had something to cope with. The motor boat has been tied up to the stern and now, prior to lifting the anchor and seeking shelter in the lee of the breakwater, the skipper foolishly decided to call all hands and have a shot at bringing her inboard. Probably this is as dull to you as your cake recipe is to me. I can’t describe the incident because I’d have to go into technical details and talk of derricks and booms and things and I guess you wouldn’t get the full import.

Imagine seven men wrestling with a boat which swings viciously over our heads… Now she is out over the water and we pull on ropes to swing her inboard…then she lunges back at us…we drop to the deck and try to grab her, to hold her, and to get her in position for lowering….like a bunch of circus hands with an angry elephant…

Ropes part, matelots curse, and from the safety of the bridge the skipper shouts meaningless advice. He is worried. Well, we made it, me an’ the lads – and nobody was hurt seriously.

This morning a letter from mother and full of interest and very flattering. I love being flattered – it’s a hell of a weakness, isn’t it? I f anyone tells me I’ve got a way with women, I can feel my head swelling. But sometimes I’ve been fooling around – maybe impersonating the leading seaman or the skipper or merely drawing from my imagination and the boys have all laughed and someone, usually the cook, has said – ‘By Christ, you ought to be on the stage.’ That’s what I like to hear, pal. The cook’s a great guy, he is! A fine judge – I think the world of the cook…

To return. Mother says this; ‘I really wish you would write. You could do it. How about having a shot at a short story – something minus a plot, a chosen character as a study, a detailed description of life aboard… It’s the sort of thing that catches on. Stella would fix up the technical part and type it for you.’

Apart from the fact that Stella has not been consulted on her part in the transaction, I still ‘hae ma doots.’ At times I love to write – yet I lack that eternal spark that is necessary in any form of art. In Art one creates for one’s own satisfaction….You act and it doesn’t really matter if there is no audience…And I can’t imagine writing for my own satisfaction – and indirectly that is the motive – or should be, don’t you think? Well, what do you think about it?

Whilst on the subject. Have you read the latest MODERN READING selection? So far I’ve only read the first few stories and they’re gems. There is a Benedict Thielen story that brought a lump to my throat – it’s beautiful. And incidentally, ever heard of – wait for it – Rabindranath Tagore? In Holyhead’s small public library I found a slim volume of his works. Apparently his name is famous in India, where he is ‘as great in music as in poetry and his songs are sung all over India. He was already famous at 19 when he wrote his first novel and plays written when he was but a little older are still played in Calcutta.’

W.B.Yeats supplies the introduction and writes: ‘I have carried the manuscripts of these translations around with me for days, reading it in railway trains and in restaurants and I have often had to close it lest some stranger see how much it moves me.’

The volume I have, entitled ‘Gitanjali(?)’, contains for the most part prose offerings of a religious flavour. But they are lovely. Listen to these lines:

‘Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;

Where knowledge is full;

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow

domestic walls;

Where words come out from the depths of truth;

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreamy

desert sand of dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and

action –

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.’

Your last letter was here when I returned from leave. Most of it was, unfortunately, out of date since I had seen you in the meantime but it was all very interesting, the philosophical paragraph and the idea that fate is at work building the individual from the subconscious. That is very true. I have great confidence in myself now – and I know my fellow-men better. I realize the difference when I’m on leave and meet civilians – people I knew and even admired. Now they seem almost petty and narrow-minded.

There is so much to write about and I have only ten minutes to watch time. I’m remembering fast all the things I should have mentioned. I’m just getting in the mood. Too bad – but there’ll be next time.

Write, as I write, Stella, when you feel like it, never out of a sense of duty. I love your letters, really I do, but don’t write because you think you have to….I’ll understand.

My love to you & Wendy & Michael (not forgetting the rabbit)

Hal