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(With an envelope.)

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Trinity College | Cambridge
6 Nov. 1929

My dear Gerald,

I have just had a request from the Colonial Office to tell them all your bad qualities (refusal to learn Catechism &c), so I want to know what you are up to now, and whether you have abandoned your studies in London, and are off to Africa again. At any rate I hope the malaria is put right.

I am now at the ordinary work of term.

Your affectionate godfather
A. E. Housman.

[DIrection on envelope:] Gerald Jackson Esq. | c/ Rupert Jackson Esq. M.D. | 97 Clifton Avenue | West Hartlepool [Redirected to:] 33 Courtfield Rd | S: Kensington | London S W 7

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The envelope, which bears a 1½d. stamp, was postmarked at Cambridge at 9 p.m. on 6 November and at West Hartlepool at 11.30 a.m. on the 7th.

(With an envelope.)

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Trinity College | Cambridge
19 Sept. 1929

My dear Gerald,

I am extremely sorry that this vexatious trouble has come upon you. I hope you will find at the Royal School of Mines all that you require, and I suppose there is no doubt that you will. They say there is no cloud without a silver lining, and we may hope that it will not be two years, as it would have been, before you sit again at the table in our Combination Room.

Your affectionate godfather
A. E. Housman.

[Direction on envelope:] Gerald Jackson Esq. | c/ R. W. P. Jackson Esq. M.D. | 97 Clifton Avenue | West Hartlepool [Redirected:] c/o Cook | Springfield

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The envelope, which bears a 1½d. stamp, was postmarked at Cambridge at 10.15 p.m. on 19 September.

(With an envelope.)

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Trinity College | Cambridge
2 May 1929

My dear Gerald,

I was glad to have your letter of Jan. 28, with your photograph, which however made you look rather thin; though I suppose that is the right condition for a hunter, and perhaps for a geologist.

My godfather has died at the age of 88, so you must expect to lose me in 18 years’ time.

I expected to see Rupert last term, as he was coming up to a College Feast for men of his period; but just on the eve of it the Master of the College went and died {1}, so it had to be put off, I suppose till next year.

The Times has been printing snapshots of lions in the jungle. In one of them they were eating something, and I feared it might be you, but it was more like a zebra.

I am glad we may expect to see you back in England in the summer. I expect to be away from here most of July, but in residence most of August.

Your affectionate godfather
A. E. Housman.

[Direction on envelope:] Gerald Jackson Esq. | R.C.B.C. Ltd. | N’Changa | Via N’Dola | N. Rhodesia | South Africa

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The envelope, which bears a 1½d. stamp, was postmarked at Cambridge at 7.15 p.m. on 2 May and at Ndola, N.W. Rhodesia, on 25 May.

{1} William Mollison, the Master of Clare College, died on 10 March.

(With an envelope.)

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Trinity College | Cambridge
31 Jan. 1936

My dear Gerald,

I ought to have thanked you before, and this letter will hardly catch you before you start on your holiday; but, next to walking, nothing tires me so much as writing, and I tend to fight shy of it. The nurses went into ecstasies over the sweets, and over admiration of your taste, for I told them that I had left the choice to you. Harrod’s provender was also good. The doctor told me to-day that he is not coming again for a week.

I had a letter the other day from Rupert, who seems to be profiting by the retirement of some competitors. I hope that you will enjoy your holiday and that it will freshen you up for the examination as desired.

Your affectionate godfather
A. E. Housman.

[Direction on envelope:] Gerald Jackson Esq. | St Thomas’s Hospital | London S.E.1 [Redirected to:] Hotel Trantheim | Engleberg | Switzerland [At the top:] Please forward

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The envelope, which bears a 2½d. stamp, was postmarked at Cambridge at 9 p.m. on 31 January, and has been marked in pencil, ‘Written 3 months before his death on April 30th ’35’.

(With an envelope.)

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Trinity College | Cambridge
31 March 1934

My dear Gerald,

I congratulate you on your success, which I know has been won by very hard work, though I had not much doubt that you would pull it off; and I am glad that you look forward with pleasure to your next step. I hope that when you come to the patients you will find that what you have been learning about their insides is all true.

Your affectionate godfather
A. E. Housman.

[Direction on envelope:] G. C. A. Jackson Esq | c/ Rupert Jackson Esq. M.D. | 97 Clifton Avenue | West Hartlepool

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The envelope, which bears a 1½d. stamp, was postmarked at Cambridge at 1.15 p.m. on 1 April, and has been marked in pencil ‘31 March 1934’.

(With an envelope.)

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Trinity College | Cambridge
26 Dec. 1933

My dear Gerald,

I am writing to thank you for your Christmas letter and to wish you a happy New Year. As this will soon be here, you will be in need of another cheque, which I will send when I know your address for certain. I am going on much the same. Remember me to your family if you are still among them.

Your affectionate godfather
A. E. Housman.

[Direction on envelope:] Gerald Jackson Esq. | c/ Rupert Jackson Esq., M.D. | 97 Clifton Avenue | West Hartlepool

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The envelope, which bears a 1½d. stamp, was postmarked at Cambridge at 10.15 p.m. on 26 December, and has been marked in pencil ‘26/12/33’.

(With an envelope.)

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Trinity College | Cambridge
10 June 1933

My dear Gerald,

I am very glad to hear of your success in the examinations and of your nearness to success in the Iraq post. I hope you will have good weather and enjoy yourself with the Irish Guards. Your news about Rupert’s financial affairs is very vexatious.

I am back here after about three weeks† absence with relations in Worcestershire and Somerset, where I had some pleasant motoring, but I am not well. In the hot weather in the beginning of June I spent a week in a nursing home, because the doctor said my heart was all over the place. It has behaved properly ever since, but I am told not to walk much in the heat, and that deprives me of the exercise on which I regularly depend, and makes me feel weak. On the other hand an oculist to whom I went today about new spectacles says that my eyes are very good.

I feel that I ought to apologise for answering your letter by return of post: it annoys me when people do it to me.

Your affectionate godfather
A. E. Housman.

[Direction on envelope:] G. C. A. Jackson Esq. | Medical School | St Thomas’s Hospital | S. E. 1

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The envelope, which bears a 1½d. stamp, was postmarked at Cambridge at 10.15 p.m. on 10 June, and has been marked in pencil ‘10
June 1933’.

† Sic.

(With an envelope.)

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Trinity College | Cambridge
6 April 1932

My dear Gerald,

When I saw your envelope with its foreign stamps and Spanish names I thought you might have got a job in Argentina; but I see it is Spain and not a job. However I hope you have been getting useful experience. Perhaps I should have been wise to pay Spain a visit this spring, which I have often vaguely thought of doing; but I had such luck with my weather abroad last Easter that I felt sure I could not repeat it. Having been very busy I have put off answering your letter till I daresay you have already started for home; so it will be safest to send it through Rupert. I was glad to have the report of your paper, read before the Geological Society {1}. The vocabulary, like the English array at Bannockburn, was “gay yet fearful to behold.”

Your affectionate godfather
A. E. Housman.

[Direction on envelope:] G. C. A. Jackson Esq. | c/ Rupert Jackson Esq. M.D. | 97 Clifton Avenue | West Hartlepool [Redirected to:] Vista Alegre 9 | Minas de Rio Tinto | Huelva Spain [Redirected again to:] Dept of Geology | Royal School of Mines | S. Kensington | London S.W.7

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The envelope, which bears a 1d. stamp and a 1½d. stamp, was postmarked at Cambridge at 3 p.m. on 6 April, at West Hartlepool, Co. Durham, at 11.30 a.m. on 7 April, and at Minas de Riotinto, Huelva, on 13 April. On the back is written, in an unidentified hand, ‘Hope you are well | RU’ (i.e. Rupert).

{1} Probably ‘The geology of the N’Changa district of Northern Rhodesia’, published in the Journal of the Geological Society of London, lxxxviii (1932), 443–515.

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Trinity College | Cambridge
19 May 1927

My dear Gerald,

I have your letter of March 24 and am glad that lions and influenza had not then made an end of you. I have never had influenza yet, but shall probably have it to-morrow.

I am interested to hear of your intentions about taking a research degree and possibly coming to Cambridge. Of course I should be glad to see you here, but it is no good asking my opinion and advice, which are valueless, as I stick to my job and know hardly anything about scientific studies here. Do not call Nicholas a Professor: he may perhaps become one some day, if he is good, and so may you; but Professors do not grow on every bush.

The eclipse of the sun on June 29 has evidently been arranged by Rupert, and Hartlepool is to be the most eclipsed spot. North Wales will be sprinkled with Fellows of Trinity sleeping out on mountain tops; but those are youngish men, who want to be able to tell lies about it in their old age to a generation which did not witness it; and I cannot expect to live long enough for that. Most of June I shall spend with old friends in Gloucestershire and Worcestershire, and at the end of August I expect to go on a motoring tour in Burgundy.

I hope you will keep well, and not fall out of your aeroplane on to geological objects, however attractive.

Your affectionate godfather
A. E. Housman.

My godfather {1} is now 88, so it is not an unhealthy profession.

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{1} John Tuppen Woolwright.

(With an envelope.)

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Trinity College | Cambridge
5 Feb. 1930

My dear Gerald,

This is a belated answer to your letter to me at Christmas, which I hope you enjoyed at Rupert’s. They tell me that it was very difficult to get you to leave your work even to go and see your family, so I don’t know whether I can induce you to come here some time from Saturday to Monday. So far as I can see ahead, any date would suit me; but during term, that is down to the middle of March, it would be necessary for me to know some time beforehand, as I might not be able to get you a bed in College.

I hope the arrangements which you were trying to make about the D. Sc. have turned out successfully.

Your bad language about the English climate is really rather ungrateful, for it appears from statistics that last December was the sunniest within human memory.

I had plenty to eat and drink at Christmas, and consequently am quite well, as I hope you are.

Your affectionate godfather
A. E. Housman.

[Direction on envelope:] Gerald Jackson Esq. | 85 Oakley Street | Chelsea | London S. W. 3.

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The envelope, which bears a 1½d. stamp, was postmarked at Cambridge at 9 p.m. on 5 February, and has been marked in pencil
‘5 feb 1930’.