Letter from Walter de la Mare, South End House, to Siegfried Sassoon, 1952 February 5 : autograph manuscript signed with initials.

Record ID: 
419400
Accession number: 
MA 4706.7
Author: 
De la Mare, Walter, 1873-1956.
Credit: 
Purchased, 1991.
Description: 
1 item (2 pages) ; 8.9 x 11.4 cm
Notes: 

Written from "S. E. House / Montpelier Row."
The Introduction to which De la Mare refers is Sassoon's Foreword to "Sport from Within" by Frank Atherton Brown published in 1952.

Summary: 

Praising his Introduction and making several suggestions; asking about the inspiration for his poems in "Emblems of Experience" (1951); saying "This is only a scrap to tell you how much & how admiringly have enjoyed your Introduction. I don't think (speaking not as an expert regarding its theme - if only I were) it c'd be bettered. Nor does it show, any symptom of strain or trouble;" suggesting some minor edits; commenting on Sassoon's most recently published poetry; saying "Barnes in his dialect has been all but my lifelong joy. I was keenly interested in your saying that most of your poems in E. of E. were 'addressed to no one'. [? a kind of 2nd self, or guardian angel, or pre-natal listener.] The modernist autocracy will have been empty voices long after R.H. & Lascelles A.[bercrombie] & others are assured of perenniality. Old words : - I once attempted to translate a Times leader in to vocabulary of the A.V. - & gave it up in the 2nd paragraph."

Provenance: 
Purchased on the Gordon Ray Fund, 1991.