SIEGFRIED SASSOON (1873-1958) AND THOMAS HARDY (1840-1928)

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SIEGFRIED SASSOON (1873-1958) AND THOMAS HARDY (1840-1928)
A long and detailed 2pp. a.l.s. by Sassoon with his monogram, to H.M. Tomlinson, dated Heytesbury 15.3.56., ranging over his thoughts on the winter: 'This letter is mostly a matter of sitting by the log fire & wishing you were in the other chair ... the drawn out winter makes me feel a bit of an automaton ... Everything bone dry, not a blade of grass shooting, nor a hawthorn bud breaking, though my three mares apparently find something to nibble at when not munching the hay I carry out for them every afternoon. I suppose one aquires merit by works of solitude ...'; Thomas Hardy: 'I mentioned that I have a post-card photo of his [Sir Henry Jackson's] father in a group with T.H. at the Oxford [?] Giving in 1913. He has now presented me with a ... postcard ... sent by T.H. to a Cambridge friend ... It is a drawing of a dial -- similar to the sundial in the drawing of a dovecote at the beginning of Wessex Poems: but instead of Tempus Fugit, T.H. has written Tempus Ridendi et Flendi, derived I assume from a quotation from Seneca ... "All things in life are a cause of laughter or tears." How odd it was, that wistful inability to accept the message of hope -- in one of such spritual breadth & imagination and such human homeliness as the Wessex wizard ...'; his abstemious nature: 'Distant are the days when I sniffed down a liqueur brandy after dinner at the Reform. But it was never natural to me - my Thornycroft forebears, from whom I mainly derive constitutionally, having been frugal and abstemious enjoyers of plain living. A good mixture isn't it - ? Cheshire cheese farmers & Oriental aristocrats (people of fine breeding)...'; concluding: 'But I am becoming transcendental ... Yours, S.S.'

Lot Essay

cf. D. Felicitas Corrigan Siegfried Sassoon: a Poet's Pilgrimage, London, Victor Gollancz, 1973, p. 27: 'Thomas Hardy ... was one of Sassoon's heroes, but the two met as equals rather than as master and disciple.'

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