the experience of reading in Britain, from 1450 to 1945...

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Dorothy Wellesley : Hogarth Living Poets

'Dear Lady London,the Lawrence letters & Hogarth Living Poets have arrived......I am not half-way thro' it yet, as it takes turn with Shakespeare and Gibbon, & catching the English mail which leaves tomorrow.....The same night they arrived I had a huge fire in my shack outside & read nearly thro' the 'Living Poets'. Do not feel your kindness was wasted if I say I loved its company more than its contents. I loved its blue cover, crisp new paper & Londonish presence in my lonely Antarctic room. It took me back to London people and parties, the talk & the fashions & the jungle of reputations. This is how you solaced & delghted me for an evening by sending it......By adding the 'Poets' to the Letters you added a delicate melting sweet to a meal. It was just to my taste. The Lawrence letters are so far delightful. he is among the great letter-writers, of a lighter kind. I have been lately reading the Keats' letters you gave me in London. His matter is more searching and profound. His far greater fame attracts a far greater attention. How unbearably sad they are at the end. I had to to rush to the poems to reassure myself, that such a life was not a tragedy but a triumph.......Last night by a log-fire, I seemed the loneliest most contented man in the world. I was reading Romeo and Juliet and beginning this letter to you...'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Walter D'Arcy Cresswell      Print: Book

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