Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967) and Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)
Five autograph letters signed (‘Siegfried Sassoon’ and with his monogram) to Gwen Raverat, Heytesbury House, Wiltshire, 11 June 1936-18 July 1956
Six pages in total, 95 x 135mm to 180 x 138mm. Provenance: Sotheby's, 29 & 30 June 1982, lot 565.

Letters to a friend, the engraver Gwen Raverat, on her work, strained relations with his son, the deaths of Max Beerbohm and Walter de la Mare, and disapproving of the publication of Rupert Brooke’s letters. Sassoon writes with his approval, having received Raverat’s sketches for the title page of The Old Century [published 1938]: ‘They make me wish that you were illustrating my book more copiously’, indicating his favourite, ‘which gives me the feeling of the book best […] The keynote of the look being delicate meditation & tranquillity of mood’ (11 June 1936); he informs Gwen that one of her pictures hangs by a window in his bedroom (‘I gaze at it entranced as I lie in bed. It is wonderfully alive; and takes me right into it; & am back in Cambridge & just off, as it were, to visit you & my other friends’ (26 June 1954); recommends Woodcuts and Some Words by [Edward Gordon] Craig and reports that [his son] George was married without his knowledge: ‘I know so little about the girl that I can’t speculate, and only feel hurt by the way it happened. I suppose the young usually treat parents rather ruthlessly. No use pitying oneself!’ (21 June 1955); laments the death of Walter de la Mare: ‘One can't measure what he was meant for one. He will always be there, in his works; but it gives one a bad jolt when the human part of the memories comes back, with the word nevermore. And he was so wonderful, and so beautifully ordinary also, like most really great people’ (30 June 1956); and promises they will discuss Rupert [Brooke’s] letters when they next meet: ‘I can only say that – good though the letters are as a basis for a sympathetic biography – I think it very wrong that they should be published as they are; & can see no way of compromising about the emotional revelations’ (18 July 1956).

[With:] Walter de la Mare (1901–86). Two letters signed, one autograph and one typed, to Gwen Raverat, Hill House and The Old Park, Buckinghamshire, 30 December 1935 and 7 September 1942. 3.5 pages in total: Praising her illustration of [Four Tales from Hans Andersen, ed. R.P. Keigwin (1935)] – ‘I love the little book & have read it again and again explored the cuts. Hans Andersen is an v[er]y old flame of mine; I once did a three-decker for the Times Lit Sup on his centenary - & yet he never said a word!’ – and offering some whimsical thoughts on fairy tales (30 December); and rhapsodising over her work on Crossings [published 1942].