Correspondence – Page 28

Col. Louts. Robin White, R.B.

From Cary.
Clouds Hill
Moorton
Dorset

13. IV. 36.

You will think this is a voice from the dead;
and that is almost what it is. I left the RAF (time expired)
a month ago, and feel like a lout dog.

Actually that hasn’t driven me to letter writing;
I find it a worse task than ever. When you has nothing to
do, the idea of writing becomes wholly repellent. But for
two years I have been carrying about with me a letter
Antelope-headed notepaper, meaning to answer it, and the
blinking conscience was at last rasped into life by meeting
four days ago a little man (name unknown: certainly a naval
officer: probably Fleet Air Arm : doin’ a courge at the RAF
school at Farnborough, now: and doin’ photography at the
former Logggg room. Can you place him from that?) who
told me you were still on or in the Antelope. The nouns
in one ship sounds so incredibly persistent that I feel
I must match the moment and communicate with you. I hope
it is today. The Antelope, as a relief from Lesnes, Duvbos
and Heswall on my table tells me, has their asbestos lagging
or bog sisam pipes. She looks like a destroyer, otherwise:
but the photograph is mostly bow-wave and smoke.

You will have forgotten your letter. It was mostly
about the Bruce Rogers Odyssey, then a recent acquisition.
I have my grave doubts about that book. The translation
is too unfaithful: too deliberately unfaithful. The print
too delicate. The [illegible] neither true Greek nor new.
Bruce Rogers got the ideas from books of drawings from
Greek Vases, and adapted freely. However there it is.
The cheap edition has sold well, the States: and the
dear edition (for England) is nearly all sold. The crash
in the U.S.A. meant that none of the expensive copies went
there, as at all, though 250 had been so earmarked. Consequently
poor England was asked to absorb the lot. There are about
50 still unsold, I believe; but they are going.

It was a pot-boiler, almost literally. The heater
of my bath, and the bath itself, depended on it. All works
well.