Pièce 225 - Letter from Percy Withers to R. C. Trevelyan

Epwell Mill, Banbury. - Presumes to "revive a casual & far too exiguous acquaintance' by telling Trevelyan how much he appreciated his poem to [Goldsworthy] Lowes Dickinson [published in the "New Statesman" on 22 October] which seemed the 'noblest remiscence [sic: reminiscence, a mis-spelling for which Withers apologises in the margin]' for a man he 'knew but slightly in the troubled days of 1918' but for whom he has 'always felt the profoundest admiration'. Read the poem a few hours ago over his 'customary bed-ridden breakfast'. The Bottomleys stayed with them last week: Emily was 'jaded & listless', but Gordon 'exuberant & irrepressible, & perhaps more self-engrossed than ever'; it seems that the 'crushing burdens of these days, even the desolation & sorrows of his friends' slip from him 'like water from a duck's back'. Wishes Trevelyan was not so far away, and that there was 'reasonable hope' of seeing him again. Has heard occasionally about his wife's 'failing eyesight' and wished he could tell him how much he felt for her and Trevelyan, though he also hears of 'such fortitude as makes sympathy almost an offence'. Sends his and his wife's greetings to her, and 'remembrances of the happy visit' they paid long ago.