Letter of the Week

Every week, on this page, we will show a different letter from a selection of letters from Paul O'Prey's books on Robert Graves correspondence In Broken Images and Between Moon and Moon.

Date: 31 MAR 1926

Recipient: Sassoon, S.L. (1886-1967)

Location: Cairo

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No date [postmarked 31 March 1926]

Dearest Siegfried

I need not old-soldier you about Egypt and after all its main features are exactly as one imagines them from Europe. I did not share Jenny's disappointment over the Nile: 'The book at school is all wrong; it says the Nile's waters are even bluer than the sky and they're just a dirty green,' but I had discounted the camels and donkeys as much exaggerated but find them only too true. I had expected trams in Cairo but not such nice ones. The Sphinx has really a beautiful face and a tail newly unearthed, coiled round its haunches like a kitten's and a copybook between its paws. The food is very nice and so is the sun.

The University is a comic-opera: I have never been so useless in my life before or with such pomp and circumstance. I had a lecture a week ago and have my next a week hence. 'Shakespeare was a great poet. He lived in London and wrote plays. London is in England. Plays are what you get at the theatre. A poet is a person who. ..Oh, yes, I'll spell the word on the blackboard. POET. No, Shakespeare is not another word for Byron,'

Anyhow, Nancy is getting well: main thing, and the children who all got measles are now recovered. I am \\'riting: I think readably. Laura is even more Laureate than ever. We intend to return at the end of May if there's any money to return on: which will be seen in due course.

[…]

I had a nice Lamb-esque letter from Edmund. I would welcome a letter from you but know it's unlikely that you'll have any small- talk fresh enough to keep for the voyage here. Laura and I are writing a book together about poetry and so on. It is extremely unlikely that Nancy, Laura and I will ever disband, now we've survived this odd meeting and continue to take everything for granted as before.

The cinemas here are pretty bad but ice-creams are obtainable.

[…]

I miss football very much and don't take enough exercise.

An Englishwoman in the next street was strangled last week by a camel driver and we had an earthquake on Monday.

Love from us all

Robert