THREE TYPED LETTERS from WARNER to ALYSE GREGORY Warner, Sylvia Townsend

A GROUP OF THREE LETTERS FROM SYLVIA TOWNSEND WARNER to ALYSE GREGORY Letter #1. November 10, 1965 - 1 and 1/4 pp Letter #2. October 31-Nov. 4, 1966. - 1. pp. Letter #3 June 20, 1967 - 1 and 1/2 pp Here we have THREE Typed letters from SYLVIA TOWNSEND WARNER addressed to DEAREST ALYSE from 1965-1967, unsigned being STW s file copies with typed signature Sylvia at end of each; all on plain white 8 x 10 stapled paper (headed Maiden Newton, Dorchester) now lightly toned from age (more so at edges); all VG with normal rumpling at edges; each intensely personal in nature as Alyse was one person whom STW confided in throughout her life; content generally revolves around STW s impression Theodore Powys and his wife Violet and also travel reminiscences of Scotland and Cornwall; to our knowledge these letters are UNPUBLISHED although possibly they are held in uncatalogued Archives at the Dorset Museum; Each letter is headed Maiden Newton, DorchesterThe Letters are written in Warner s personal conversational style, rich in wit. Seemingly effortless prose with almost no type-outs in the letters; the 1965 letter describes writing T.H. White s biography it is like conducting a campaign, with one s mind being at once the general, the head of staff and the quarter-master, endless calculation and strategy of approach, measureless expanses of things to remember ; the same letter remembers a friend Katie when I recall her to my mind s eye, it is Cezanne I see: the red hand in the purple mitten, the unequivocal planes of her face. It was so in real life. Sometimes I could almost smell the oil-paint ; the second letter was interrupted for 5 days by working on New York proofs [presumably The New Yorker] but contains a poetical treatment of her recent rip to Scotland: marvelous to breathe the the un-poisoned air, air that blows over rock and water and more rock and more water, and rattles some dead heather and encounters a few sheep and cools itself on a little snow ; the third letter is mostly about Theodore Powys- Later on, in the thirties, Theodore became extremely jealous of his sons, and I listened to morose confidences, specially during the Francis-at-home period. I also heard a few from Violet [his wife] to suggest that his life was in any way impaired by Violet is outrageous ; so many letters we have seen from STW deal with mundane, trivial housekeeping matters, but these sparkle with the personality of the author conveying substance to a dear friend.