“NEXT TIME I COME ALIVE I HAVE VOWED TO DO TWO THINGS - RIDE LIKE A CENTAUR & SWIM LIKE A SEAL...”
DE LA MARE
(Walter John, 1873-1956, Poet and Novelist)
Fine Autograph Letter Signed to “Dear Rosemary” SISSON
(1923-2017, Dramatist and Novelist) when she was a child, saying that she “mist, when you wrote, have hard a little bird calling. I was talking to you - & thoroughly enjoying myself - only a few days ago, & then, your Letter. It is ages since the last. Then you were about so high and now it is SO. I shouldn’t (after devouring that photograph) like to be the ball even for half a chuckka if you ever go in for Polo! What a marvel Daphne is! Please give her my love & the greatest Respect. I wish indeed I could see the Cottage. Next time I come alive I have vowed to do two things - ride like a Centaur & swim like a Sea. So perhaps you wouldn’t mind giving me a few lessons if we meet early? I am not a bit surprised the poems have left off for a while, & am sure when you thought (I hope knew) they were getting bad it was best to stop. Mark my words, they may begin again... Do you mind old stories - really exciting ones like Little R.R.H’L? - after they have been spoilt by somebody’s meddling... but it’s only to bring you my love & some more to your father and mother...”, 2 sides 4to., Hill House, Taplow headed paper, 11th October
Item Date:
1935
Stock No:
42425
£325
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DE LA MARE
(Walter John, 1873-1956, Poet and Novelist)
Collection of Three Autograph Letters Signed, two to Sir Michael SADLER
(1861-1943, Historian, Educationalist and University Administrator) and one to his wife Mary, Lady Sadler, the first says that he thinks "perhaps John Keats would be the best title for the lecture: it would give the most freedom, & I could centralise on any particular aspect of the subject, if this course suggested itself. May I say what a pleasure it is to me to hear the praises that are greeting your son's novel. I have not read it yet but am anxious to do so and wish it every possible success ...", 2 sides 8vo., 10th March, the next says that it is "exceedingly kind of Lady Sadler & yourself to invite me to say a second night. But is a rather important that I shall be in London on Saturday ... if there is a night train on Friday I think I had better go by that. But I am most grateful. I will enquire nearer the day about the morning train to Leeds & send you word, but with your clear directions any one with even less sense of direction than myself could find their way so please let me make my way to the University & do not trouble about the taxi or to meet me. I wish a little less stupid self had been preparing this lecture ... It is good to hear that you approve of the English Asscn lecture ...", 4 sides 8vo., 29th April and the third letter is to Lady Sadler saying that he "reached home about 8 o'clock yesterday morning after a fairly comfortable journey thanks chiefly to those delicious buns. It had been such a very pleasant visit; & I am more grateful than I can say, to you & to Sir Michael for all your kindness. Indeed 'The Return' ... if you should find the time & patience to read it, it will be giving real pleasure to its author. I am wondering from what dreadful raw & overweaning ... the interviewer has put into the Yorkshire Post a craving for the lecturer! Now I can boast that my life's sum of happiness has suddenly been increased by about thirty honors - and I have not yet begun to console myself with the Bottle! I am sending 'China' ... and also an ancient copy of an ancient novel, who hasn't yet recovereed from his astonishment at that immense audience. If Keats could have caught a glimpse of it a hundred years ago, he would, perhaps, have thought a little better of the the Public ..." with a postscript that he has left behind his "old leather toilet case for razors etc, would the maid, if she finds it, very kindly send this on ...", 4 sides 8vo., 8th May, all from 14 Thornsett Road, Anerley, London, March to May
Item Date:
1921
Stock No:
40546
£975
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DE LA MARE
(Walter John, 1873-1956, Poet and Novelist)
Fine Typed Letter with autograph amendments Signed to “Dear Rosemary” SISSON
(1923-2017, Dramatist and Novelist) when she was a young girl, thanking her for her letter and saying he had “no notion that you could possibly have said Goodbye to Cheltenham. I wish indeed I could have seen you there, but for some other reason than a lecture. The fact that there were all those silent faces when I came can only have been Obedience to Orders. I remember mounting only the first step of the intimidating eagle reading desk and then discovering that I could scarcely see over its beak. Do send me the translation some day. Cuckoos; I forget names with the greatest of ease, but not cuckoos. I can remember seeing four in one leafy tree near Salisbury, one flying over the Thames at Oxford and one when I was sat in the garden here actually alighted on the top of a pole a few years away - no doubt to be admired, or did she think my hat was a Meadow Pip’s nest? This year I saw our swallows the day before I heard the first cuckooing - April 20th. I am sad about Wordsworth., but believe he is chiefly the elderly’s poet, so I am afraid is going to be rather a long time before you forgive his Little Lucy’s!...”, 1 side 4to., Hill House, Taplow headed paper, 3rd May
Item Date:
1937
Stock No:
42426
£250
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DE LA MARE
(Walter John, 1873-1956, Poet and Novelist)
Collection of Four Typed Letters Signed with some manuscript amendments, to Jon WYNNE-TYSON
(1924-2020, Author,Publisher, Quaker, Activist and Pacifist, Founder of the Centaur Press) the first saying "how well I recollect a little difficulty that occurred over a brief but obscure rhyme which was contributed to Enquiry. I had no notion of course that John Galsworthy had transluminated what was 'a bit obscure'. Do let us meet some day ... meanwhile if you'd care to send the two books you mention by post they shall be safely returned and without delay These next few weeks are made difficult by a good many engagements and my having lately been less well again ...", suggesting that they meet in about three weeks, "things ought to be clearer then, and some of the imperative things to do, heaven helping, done! ...", 2 sides oblong 8vo., the next confirms the meeting and asks "if this address will be easy to find .. Apart from a car, I think the best route is to Richmond Station ... The stopping place is Crown Road. Montpelier Row is immediately on your left ... Do tell me then if Gawsworth's remark to Cox was viva voce! ...", 1 side oblong 8vo., the next thanks him "for sending me without a day's delay, your copy of The Enchanted April. One only has to dip for a moment or two to realise what one will find in the well. Its author was a great friend of Katherine Mansfield, wasn't she? And the other day an Australian friend came to tea with me who knew the whole family. It won't, I gather, be any sort of a bother if I keep the book for some little time. I did so much enjoy that little tea party, but regret ... that so much of it was in the form of a monologue and in a voice I know only too well. Years ago a friend gave me a book containing beautiful reproductions of details in nearly all the well known pictures of Breughel, with a preface written by the Custodian of the Breughel Gallery ... fascinating and it is astonishing that so many minute fractions of his big pictures should be pictures in themselves. Bosch I don't know well - not thoroughly ... though reference is made to him by the Midget, Miss M. in an old novel of mine that appeared in the early twenties ..." and returning some books, 2 sides oblong 8vo., and finally he says that "Mrs Little will certainly bless your name (though with my usual promptitude I nearly sent it off to another visitor - the glove I mean) ... Do at any time send me any book if you would like me to put my name in it ...", 1 side oblong 8vo., with one original envelope, all from 4 Southend Road, Montpelier Row, Twickenham9th September to 12th October 1953, together with carbon copies of the replies from Wynne-Tyson to De La Mare, which extensively fill in the background to the letters, in the reply to number 3 he writes "Unmistakably voce and very viva ...", 8 sides A4, 9 St Anne's Close, Highgate, September to October
Item Date:
1953
Stock No:
40717
£775
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DE MORGAN
(William Frend, 1839-1917, Artist, Inventor and Author)
Autograph Letter Signed to "Carissima Margot"
saying he "must have "showed my hand for you to find out what I most wanted of all things - that beautiful soap! The very first time I used it, my hand became like that of a court lady - that soft and white, with filbert nails like any portrait in a gallery! I shall always think of the donor when I wash the happy recipient of this birthday gift. T, the patient has just had some champagne, and goes on well - but it was an awful joab to get the cork out ...", 2 sides 4to., addressed at the head "10 + 10 + 10 + 10 +10 + 10 + 10!", 16th November
Item Date:
1909
Stock No:
40544
£475
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