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: 21-30 NOV 1917

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

Location: 3 Garr. Batt. RWF Kinmel Park

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[No date c. November 25, 1917]

[3rd Garr. Batt. RWFus

Kinmel Park

Rhyl]

Dear old Sass.

I wrote a letter last week and forgot to post it: now it's stale so I'll write another. Your poems are damned good, but perfectly horrific as they're meant to be. Do cheer up, Sass. If you still want to know the meaning of a strong anti-war complex it's just this: that you're so obsessed with the idea of the perpetual horror of this war that you can no longer, as in 1916, make plans for after the war, and can never conceive, as I still can, of a new world, emptier but wiser and happier than anything that has gone before. This phase is like a nightmare which you find yourself unable to wake up from: if you make the tremendous effort which people make in their sleep knowing all their nightmare to be a lie, and wake up, you'll have as it were sound sleep for the rest of the night and a jolly morning.

Sassons, you are disappointing. There are we three inevitables, two Roberts and a Siegfried, rising side by side on the roll of fame, all still young and more or less undamaged and now just because of a corpse or two, and some shells, you are trying to drop out because your heart has gone. Sassons, what about TifIis? Tomsk? Thibet? War's a joke for me and you when we know.

Don't send me any more corpse poems, stick to your splendid Thrushes.

I saw off my sister Rosaleen to nurse in France on Thursday [Nov 22, 1917?]. On the way back here I met one of your bombers you had with you when you were hit, 31 Evans of B Company (I think that's right) on leave from the Second Battalion at Passchendaele. We hadn't talked more than a few seconds when he suddenly asked about 'Mr Sarson, him as was with us on the 27th. Is he better of his wounds?' 'Well, yes,' I said, 'he talks of coming back now; they say he's volunteered.' 'The boys, the few that's left, 'll be glad to hear that,' he said. 'I'll tell 'em. Oh, Mr Sarson never got the wind up (like Mr -Sir, you know), we'd follow him anywhere. It's different with an officer like that somehow: we could trust him.'

This was on a small visit to Nancy Nicholson who is working on a farm at St Ives, Huntingdonshire. Robbie doesn't like the idea of her. So you can quiet him down, if he mentions her. She's doing a children's book with me. Otherwise leave her out of the conversation. I don't want to have unfriendliness and I'll not even allow dear Robbie to bully Nancy. I'll parade her one day for your approval. She's an unusual person, young, kind, strong, nice-looking and a consummate painter as well as a capable farmer's boy. I know you'd like her.

I had a ripping letter from Masefield thanking me for the book. The reviews have hitherto been inadequate except that in these times of paper shortage all reviews are very much cut down.

Best love,

-R.