Robert Graves1 Deya

Robert Graves3, Deya

William Graves5 Oundle School

November 15, 1957

Dearest Wm :

Good luck in your interview. If you are wholly at your ease - and why not? - all will go well. But try to raise some sort of enthusiasm for your proposed career: dont-care-ism doesn’t go down well. There’s never been so wet a November since - since last time - but we have had about three sunny days, and I even bathed three days ago at Can Floque. The best news is getting 3 bottles of butagaz smuggled from France, which means no more dirty carbon in the kitchen until the supply gives out. We hope to spend a few days in Austria with Jenny on the way to Jugland, but she is all snarled up with the Bevan libel case (on November 21st) & doesn’t answer letters. She was very nice to Lucia and Juan on the way through. I expect my Goodbye To All That will create a stir again as it did in 1929 when it first came out - Canellun was built on the spoils. The Sunday Express reviewer cabled could he fly out & interview me. I cabled ”yes: but you’ll have to come out to Deya”, & that’s the last I’ve heard. The pups are eating raw meat now & are very large & fat & active; Mother spends most of her time trying to make them make little puddles on the Baleares. Castor is trimming the trees in the garden; the oranges nearly ripe. The stupid lilac thinks it is spring & is flowering like the pear tree. Did you hear about Ann’s dream when she was (in real life not dream) crippled with a slipped disk and in agony, & the doctor kept ineffectually injecting her with anaesthetics. In the dream a woman said: ”I have a wonderful recipe for you downstairs, come and try it!” She crawled out of bed, fell downstairs, & somehow in her fall slipped the disk back. Now she’s as right as rain. Alastair’s address is: Bell Rock House St Andrews Fife. He’s writing a novel there. Tomas is learning to read much faster than any of you: good Old Lob! The cats resent the puppies & constantly sneak in to wet the sofa. Emilia & Jaime & family Letter #6 from Robert Graves to William Graves (at Oundle School) November 15, 1957 and Marnie are coming this week end. Hope to God the weather mends.

Love Father

Robert Graves9

Please get 2 photos (passport x4cm large) and send them to Enid for your Yug visa. Better get some extra copies as you never know. Love, Mother. BG: An Aviaco plane from Barcelona-Palma crashed Friday night at Puigpunent. Only two passengers aboard.

STOP PRESS. Have changed our plans due to a letter from Jenny who begs us to spend Christmas with her in Rome. So get the photos but bring them with you. We can get Yug visas in Rome. Will get you a ticket from London to Rome leaving on the 20th. Is that right? And a couchette. Or is it the 19th? Can’t you arrange the driving test when you get back? Just let me know as soon as possible if you want to leave the 19th or 20th. Hope you like this idea as much as we do. Love, Mother.

2 Letter #6 from Robert Graves to William Graves (at Oundle School) November 15, 1957

*Glossary Alastair Reid 10. 1

Aneurin Bevan 11. 1 Ann . 1 Austria . 1 Balearic Islands . 1

Barcelona . 2 Bell Rock House . 1 Beryl Pritchard (Hodge 12. 1, 2

Canellun 13. 1 Can Floque 14. 1 Deya 15. 1 Enid Pritchard 16. 2

France . 1 Jenny Nicholson 17. 1, 2 Juan Graves 18. 1 London . 2

Lucia Graves 19. 1

10Scottish poet, writer, translator. On staff of ”The New Yorker”. Graves’s friend and confidant. Quarelled in 1961. 11Labour politician 12Robert Graves’s second wife. PPE at St Anne’s College, Oxford. Married Alan Hodge 1938. Changed her name by deed poll from Hodge to Graves in June 1943. Married Robert Graves in May 1950 after his divorce from Nancy Nicholson earlier that year. 13Graves’ house in Deia 14Graves’ boat house in Deia 15Dei is a small coastal village in the Serra de Tramuntana, which forms the northern ridge of the Spanish island of Mallorca. It is located about ten miles north of Valldemossa, and it is known for its literary and musical residents. Its idyllic landscape, orange and olive groves on steep cliffs overlooking the Mediterranean, served as a draw for German, English, and American expatriates after the First World War. 16English solicitor, who helped draw up Robert Graves’s Will. Beryl Graves’s sister. 17Robert Graves’ eldest daughter by Nancy 18Robert Graves’ second son by Beryl 19Robert Graves’ first daughter by Beryl

3 Letter #6 from Robert Graves to William Graves (at Oundle School) November 15, 1957

Marnie Pomeroy 20. 1 Palma . 2

Puigpunent . 2 Robert Graves 21. 2 Rome . 2 Toms Graves 22. 1

William Graves 23. 1 Yugoslavia . 1, 2

20Canadian author, poet, publisher and teacher. Among other books, she is the author of Emily Dickinson in the Greenwich Exchange Student Guide Literary Series. She was in Mallorca in 1956 -1958 and a close friend of the Graves’s. 21Robert Graves (1895-1985) was a poet, novelist, mythographer, critic and historian. Probably best known as the author of I,Claudius, and Claudius the God and as a survivor and poet of the Great War, he is one of the great figures of 20th Century English Poetry and Literature. 22Robert Graves’ third son by Beryl 23Robert Graves’ eldest son by Beryl

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