Beschreibung:

Series of approximately 84 typed and autograph letters signed ("Tom", "Tp", etc.), the majority typed, to his close friend Enid Faber, wife of his publisher and publishing partner Geoffrey Faber, covering a wide range of topics, both literary and personal, subjects including the death of Virginia Woolf ("...I have also been pursued by Theodora Bosanquet who wants me to write for Time and Tide about Virginia Woolf. It is bad enough having one's friend die without Time and Tide...I have toiled over a note for Horizon, simply because I thought it might be thought odd if I didn't write something; but I doubt that it will please anybody. I don't know very much about her writing: she was a personal friend who seemed to me (mutatis considerably mutandis) like a member of my own family; and I miss her dreadfully, but I don't see her exactly as her relatives see her, and my admiration for the ideas of her milieu - now rather old fashioned - is decidedly qualified..."), the dedication of Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats to her son, his godson (see lot 634), George Eliot and Middlemarch ("...really we have never forgiven her impudence in assuming the name...It seems to me one of THE novels. Yes, Dorothea is very good, and so is Casaubon; and almost everybody except Ladislaw, who is dead as plastocene..."), Dickens and Pickwick and "the Minders (and he do the Police in different voices) in Our Mutual Friend", life as a fire warden in wartime London ("...Action consists, at present, as on Sunday, of dropping my typing, donning a kind of drugget robe marked 'A.R.P.' and passing the time of day with the other doughty boys of my post (one of whom is an Iraqui, the son of a Carpet Merchant, and another a Rumanian) on the steps of the Belvedere Hotel..."), fellow Faber authors ("...I have never read a word of Sassoon's books..."), custody of his first wife Vivien ("...the Official Solicitor...has said that he will arrange a special visit to V. by the Visitor, if I will pay a special fee; and I have also undertaken, if she agrees to go to Oxford or some other place out of London for a temporary change, I will be responsible for any extra expenses..."), his Poetry Chicago article on Ezra Pound in 1946 ("...obviously, in the circumstances, this had to take precedence of everything beyond the daily routine..."), lecture tours and acceptance speeches ("...this, as it has to be dignified but witty, polished but not too grave, and formally complimentary in an informal tone, is not so easy..."), religious observances ("...Ash Wednesday is one of the two days a year when my virtue is not in danger and when I try to live cleanly and forswear sack..."), his appearances in the public print ("...my hair is NOT glossy: I have to put water on it to keep it in place, that's all..."), his time as a bank clerk ("...I have had lunch with the joint General Managers of Lloyds Bank - nobody who has never been a Bank Clerk can conceive of what a great honour that is. But rather saddening: I had gone on thinking for the last 25 years of Joint General Managers as venerable and awe-inspiring; but there was nobody of that description except the butler, and a doorkeeper named George who said he remembered me..."), his godson Tom ("...What has he been up to?...If he has taken to writing VERSE I shall be most apprehensive about his future...") with whom he compares himself ("...He is, in any case, more effusive than his Gd. Fr. was at the same age. I remember, at the age of twelve, being given my first watch for Christmas..."), encounters with fellow poets ("...Betjeman who burst in ostensibly to deal with Shell Guides but really to present me with an Old Cholemian Tie which he had bought for me in Swindon..."), the perils of stardom and of strange typewriters ("...I have succeeded in declining a request to be filmed for a News REEL? AND To (this is not usual machine and I cant control it)..."), buying his godson a telescope ("...Apparently a telescope is like a gun, and