Beschreibung:

Autograph letter signed ("Robert Frost"), to Jack Haines ("Dear Jack"), talking at length about their friend Edward Thomas ("...Yes, I saw what you wrote about Edward. You and I cared for him in a different way from the rest of them. We didnt have to wait till he was dead to find out how much we loved him. Others pitied him his misfortunes and he accepted their pity. I don't know what he looked for from me in his black days when I first met him. All he ever got was admiration for the poet in him before he had written a line of poetry. It is hard to speak of him as I want to yet. You speak of him to my liking as far as you go, and I'm sure that is far enough for the present. I wonder what De la Mare will say in his preface to his poems. Elinor and I once made it a little uncomfortable for De la Mare because he wouldn't come right out in hearty acknowledgement of what Edward Thomas had done for him... I remember once hazarding the guess that Edward hadn't been proved wrong so very many times in his first judgement of new poets that came up for judgement. Edward and I were pushing our bicycles up a hill side by side. My ʻnot so very many times' stopped him short to think. He wasn't angry. He was disturbed. What did I know? Did I know of any. He should have said not any. No want of strength or decision there. Two or three times I stopped him short like that with the way I put something. He was great fun. I've often wondered when I begun to disappoint such a critical and fastidious person... I think Edward blamed most my laziness. He would have liked me better if I had walked farther with him. He wanted me to want to walk in Wales. And then I turned out a bad letter writer after I came home. That's the worst. I should have written him twice as many letters as I did write. But so should I have written you twice as many as I have. You have to assume that I think of you a thousand times for every once I write to you..."); he also spins a long anecdote about a practical joke which he and Thomas shared and relates a conversation about him with Lord Dunsany; after discussing publishers (his problems with Mrs Nutt yet again), he tells Haines of a friend who he is sending over ("...will you just ask him down to see you and the Cathedral and perhaps Ryton and a game keeper? You'll like him and there he's from me to you...") and goes on to list some of the poems he has recently had published ("...The poems were Fire and Ice, The Valley's Singing Days , Wild Grapes , The Need of Being Versed in Country Things, Snow Dust, The Outset , The Star in a Stone Boat and Misgiving. I dont know whether you've seen the ones I've underlined. They are among my best. I don't want you to miss them..."), and ends by asking after Haines's son Robin ("...Why doesn't he come over here and be anything he pleases but a President? He cant be that unless he decides to be born in this country..."); autograph envelope (with return address "From Robert Frost..."), postmarked (stamp no longer present); docketed by Haines in pencil as "Important/ about E.T.", 8 pages, some dust-staining, 8vo , South Shaftesbury, Vermont, 20 January 1921