Letter from Walter de la Mare, Penn, to Siegfried Sassoon, 1951 June 13 : autograph manuscript signed with initials.

Discussing the passage of time and his creative struggles; apologizing for not seeing him when he was nearby but explaining he was ill; saying "Is it really possible that our last talk is now two years away. There is scarcely a vestige of any interval as I look back on it. There you sit (scarcely able to utter a word for the clater of a tongue a few yards distant from you) & what mystifies me is that there seems to be a fire in the hearth (in which the young people in the nursery-rhyme tiles are all left-handed). Can I have [illegible] the seasons! No doubt dabbling in ink on such a theme as Time could not but make hazy of any positive sense of it. That indeed Time takes its revenges! And the only certain comfort I can offer in respect to the bibelot within is that the faintest little acknowledgment of it is absolutely verboten. They all say this, & little mean it. And now I am saying it, and do. The toil I lavished on it! - a fatal confession in itself. By chance this afternoon I learned that a few centuries ago a wren was called an archangel : Why does one know for certain that the Lord of all [illegible] (in man's meaning of the word) have laboured to create either? One unexpected lesson I learned in the 'Chariot'; namely that a perpetual effort to confine the little I wanted to say within those narrow walls of rhyme etc eventuated in its becoming less difficult by far to converse with myself as it were outside them. It was a sort of enlightenment which I cannot recall having been the outcome of any other inky chore. When you next come; & you know perfectly well that this need not be long deferred (Are not our old dreary slow sooty unpunctual clitter-clatter railways Nationalized? Hasn't the Jehu who used to whisk me out into the traffic-humming Bath Road after a blissfully serene visit to the Long White Cloud any local mechanic who could splice together the remains of that self-same car to transfer its Master this far in perfect safety, since not even the deadliest of road-hogs could imagine it fair game) - Well, when you come : bring all the silver. My own ancient mug is the only sort of 'Cup' I possess; but there's a candlestick, & a teapot & a snuffbox, & two inkstands; & Mrs M. will supply a few treasured pieces & there's Goddard's in plenty; & as we expand, bits of old furniture then will be eager for a thrice-skilled hand, & at last you could fall back on your wits. Poor deers, they are so slow, & they grind a little as they chew, & nobody really & truly cares to listen to a coffee-mill containing only grounds. What a comfort it is to disparage one's self - when, between you & me, I can be alone for a whole half-hour at a time without bursting into tears:' sending his love to Frances Cornford and Gwen Raverat; concluding "I'm as sure as can be that God is in his heaven & that transcends Imagination : but I'm not sure that 'all's right with the world'. There may be much less defiled & damaged ones; & even lovelier. If only you'll come I'll show you the tiniest fish (17 or so centimeters) & also of silver."