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Details
GRAVES, Robert (1895-1985). Four autograph letters signed to Ottoline Morrell, Weirleigh, Paddock Wood, Kent, The Huts, Litherland, Liverpool and Somerville Hospital, Oxford, 15 September 1916 - 'New Year 1917', together 4 pages, 4to and 1 page, 8vo.
AN IMPORTANT WARTIME CORRESPONDENCE: a revealing series of letters on the First World War and Siegfried Sassoon. 'Its rather important that we should have a few poets left behind after the War & I've a tremendous belief in S.S. as a poet'.
Following a restorative stay at Garsington after convalescing in Wales (having been badly wounded at the Battle of the Somme), Graves thanks Ottoline for the beneficial effects of 'meeting intelligent people & staying in a beautiful house', succeeding in making him 'feel in very much better condition than I was before I got hit.' Sassoon had also been staying at Garsington in September, and Graves's letter is written on headed paper Sassoon's childhood home, Weirleigh. By the end of November Graves had been 'reabsorbed into the military machine'; writing from Litherland ('a ghastly place'), he consoles himself with the thought that 'Siegfried Sassoon is due here tonight so it won't be quite so bad'. By the following March Graves had returned from France, writing to Ottoline from his hospital bed in Oxford, 'the weather & the mud on the Somme were a bit too much for my lung as I expected, & I'm back again... with bronchitis & a broken heart'; the doctors in Rouen had prevented his return to the Front, 'I only hope the same may happen to Siegfried before he gets his Victoria Cross & his R.I.P. I quite expect to see him come home sick almost at once.'
Graves's last letter to Ottoline thanks her for sending him handkerchiefs, 'a warm suggestion of Garsington invading the dank grimness of Litherland'. Unlike Sassoon, who 'tried to fool the doctors as I did but didn't play the confidence trick with enough assurance', Graves is returning to France, perhaps because he likes constant change and is 'rather morbidly constructed in the way of liking pain & fright: in mediaeval times I might have been a flagellant friar'...'I'm looking forward intensely to my next spell in hospital because then I'll be able to do a little work again.'
Sassoon and Graves had first met at the Front in November 1915, Sassoon recording his first impressions of Graves in his diary, 'an interesting creature, overstrung and self-conscious, a defier of convention'. Sassoon had been brought home from the Somme in August 1916, two months after being awarded the Military Cross for bravery, and arrived at Litherland on 4 December, where he shared a hut with Graves. (4)
AN IMPORTANT WARTIME CORRESPONDENCE: a revealing series of letters on the First World War and Siegfried Sassoon. 'Its rather important that we should have a few poets left behind after the War & I've a tremendous belief in S.S. as a poet'.
Following a restorative stay at Garsington after convalescing in Wales (having been badly wounded at the Battle of the Somme), Graves thanks Ottoline for the beneficial effects of 'meeting intelligent people & staying in a beautiful house', succeeding in making him 'feel in very much better condition than I was before I got hit.' Sassoon had also been staying at Garsington in September, and Graves's letter is written on headed paper Sassoon's childhood home, Weirleigh. By the end of November Graves had been 'reabsorbed into the military machine'; writing from Litherland ('a ghastly place'), he consoles himself with the thought that 'Siegfried Sassoon is due here tonight so it won't be quite so bad'. By the following March Graves had returned from France, writing to Ottoline from his hospital bed in Oxford, 'the weather & the mud on the Somme were a bit too much for my lung as I expected, & I'm back again... with bronchitis & a broken heart'; the doctors in Rouen had prevented his return to the Front, 'I only hope the same may happen to Siegfried before he gets his Victoria Cross & his R.I.P. I quite expect to see him come home sick almost at once.'
Graves's last letter to Ottoline thanks her for sending him handkerchiefs, 'a warm suggestion of Garsington invading the dank grimness of Litherland'. Unlike Sassoon, who 'tried to fool the doctors as I did but didn't play the confidence trick with enough assurance', Graves is returning to France, perhaps because he likes constant change and is 'rather morbidly constructed in the way of liking pain & fright: in mediaeval times I might have been a flagellant friar'...'I'm looking forward intensely to my next spell in hospital because then I'll be able to do a little work again.'
Sassoon and Graves had first met at the Front in November 1915, Sassoon recording his first impressions of Graves in his diary, 'an interesting creature, overstrung and self-conscious, a defier of convention'. Sassoon had been brought home from the Somme in August 1916, two months after being awarded the Military Cross for bravery, and arrived at Litherland on 4 December, where he shared a hut with Graves. (4)
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