Walter D'Arcy Cresswell (1896–1960)

A wonderful selection of letters between Lady Ottoline Morrell and the somewhat notorious Poet Walter D'Arcy Cresswell. Many mentions are made of Yeats,Lytton Strachey,James Stephens,Siegfried Sassoon,Aldous Huxley and Virginia Woolf.
'Very sorry I can't come today,as I had been delighted to do,but I am in bed with influenza.Unless you write to the contrary,I shall come next Thursday. I have been ill through the chimney smoking in the march winds we were having lately,which I would breathe until suffocation & then be driven out into the cold air in a towering rage with nowhere to go. Moreover the old woman's cat uses the coal,which gives off thereby most piercing acrid discoloured fumes.But now by this warm sweet air I shall soon be cured. W. D'A. Cresswell (20 March 1930)'
My only slight quibble is that there are more letters from Cresswell to Ottoline Morell than the other way round,but that notwithstanding this is still a great insight into their lives. I often think that letters are better than biographies for getting at the true lives of individuals.
The book also includes a select bibliography and a good set of notes.… (meer)