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: 14 JUL 1945

Recipient: Roberts, Lynette (1909-1995)

Location: Galmpton, Devon

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To Lynette Roberts

14 July 1945

My dear Lynette

I can see poor you in a great domestic flap, trudging down to the well with Angharad on one hand and an old oaken bucket in the other, your mind churning over problems of vests and napkins. I have had lots of the same sort of thing in my time: with my elder family it wasn't war-time, but there was no proper way of airing clothes and the pump was always going wrong and I had no money and there were four of them.

. . . .

I am rewriting the Roebuck in the Thicket in a more scholarly way and keep making odd discoveries: yesterday's was that The Tempest begins with exactly the same dramatis personae as the Mabinogi of Taliesin:

Tegid Voel : Prospero

The damned witch Sycorax : Caridwen

Creirwy : Miranda .

Afagddu : Caliban

Ariel : Gwion

How come? Same literary source, or an intuitive reconstruction of the same age-old story?

Anyhow, by the time I have got the book written the dons will have to shut up; there'll be no argument possible except on unimportant details.

Be a white angel and lend me the book you said once that you'd lend me: the book of Gallic art, by Rhys I think. I want very much to have a look at the Paris and Treves pictures of Esus and the three cranes. I have found out who he was in Latin mythology — namely, 'Mercury who invented the alphabet by watching the flight of cranes', and I am dying to know what sort of tree the cranes are perched on. Have a look yourself first, as a botanist, and see what you think it is. Mythologically speaking, it should be a nut tree of some sort (hazel, almond, or chestnut) but the Northern Gauls were pretty strong on the ash as the tree of Gwydion (Wodin) 'the great enchanter of the Britons' so perhaps it will be that.

And if I could borrow D. W. Nash again, it would be a great help. If there is anything that I can do or get for you, let me know.

We are finding out about conditions in Spain, in case there's a chance of our going there before long; England is so awful in peace-time, and the only question is the political one - apart from transport.

Love from us and from Alan

Robert