Item 60 - Letter from Ursula Wood to R. C. Trevelyan

1 letter

Has been reading the 'Demeter story' [the "Homeric Hymn to Demeter" in the latest "From the Shiffolds"], which is a favourite of hers; praises the telling and Bob's translation. When in Malta she remembers going for a walk, she supposes with her governess though does not remember, on which she 'found a root of flowering narcissus' which smelled beautiful; she was about to pick it when she remembered Persephone and feared 'that strange rocky country would open' and the black horses of Hades' chariot come forth. Discusses the concept that 'nothing can be told except obliquely... as a story'; links Persephone picking flowers to the nymphs doing the same in [Spenser's] "Prothalamion", a 'lovely pattern that flows like a river across time... like the way the music of a dance contains all the dancers who have ever danced to it'.