BOTTOMLEY

(Ava, 1896-1974, wife of Sir John Anderson, Viscount Waverley), the the arrival of her letter was a very real pleasure - and I will own I felt relieved. I had often wondered about the book - for its alternative fates seemed certain to be either that it had been lost in the post (which does happen sometimes now) and that is a special anxiety as one's books run out of print, or that it had reached you, and you did not like it and were too kind to say so! The real reason is too unkind - the Fates or Parcae or Norns had done too much at you previously, and I am deeply sorry to know that they have been at work on you again, a thing which I had not conceived. It was a specially unkind hardship, too, that it should have happened so exactly in time to prevent your putting a particularly beautiful feather in your hat and making a State Entry into 11 Downing Street. But I ought to be happy, as I am, that my book helped some of the unkind days to be rather more bearable; and also that you are safe again, and growing well steadily. I should like to tell you when I reach London again, as you very kindly say I may... The night before Lady Crewe's party last year was the first in which I had slept away from my own village since the War began - and getting away from here grows more and more difficult. I cannot, indeed, hope that Lady Crewe will have another party for poets ready... At any rate, I shall be sure to remember when my wife and I are as venturesome again. In the meantime - saying again how glad I am to hear of your recovery at the same time as your terrible illness... with an autograph postscript saying that these years have taken most of the vitality out of stage-shadows for me; they have been lean ones for verses, and those which I enclose are almost all I have to show. They do not contain much for days of illness, but perhaps they will a little alleviate the 'even tenour' of convalescence..., 3 sides 8vo., The Sheiling, Silverdale, Carnforth headed paper, together with a printed pamphlet of his recent poems, entitled 'Before Daybreak' signed and inscribed Lady Anderson, reprinted from the Durham university Journals of 1942, 21st January