Reading Experience Database
1450-1945

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Record 26042

Reading Experience:

Evidence:
'Dear Lady London,the Lawrence letters & Hogarth Living Poets have arrived......I am not half-way thro' it yet, as it takes turn with Shakespeare and Gibbon, & catching the English mail which leaves tomorrow.....The same night they arrived I had a huge fire in my shack outside & read nearly thro' the 'Living Poets'. Do not feel your kindness was wasted if I say I loved its company more than its contents. I loved its blue cover, crisp new paper & Londonish presence in my lonely Antarctic room. It took me back to London people and parties, the talk & the fashions & the jungle of reputations. This is how you solaced & delghted me for an evening by sending it......By adding the 'Poets' to the Letters you added a delicate melting sweet to a meal. It was just to my taste. The Lawrence letters are so far delightful. he is among the great letter-writers, of a lighter kind. I have been lately reading the Keats' letters you gave me in London. His matter is more searching and profound. His far greater fame attracts a far greater attention. How unbearably sad they are at the end. I had to to rush to the poems to reassure myself, that such a life was not a tragedy but a triumph.......Last night by a log-fire, I seemed the loneliest most contented man in the world. I was reading Romeo and Juliet and beginning this letter to you...'
Century: 1900-1945
Date: Between 1 Jun 1933 and 12 Jun 1933
Country: New Zealand
Time: evening
Place: specific address: Barnswood, hinds-mayfield R.D., South Canterbury
Outdoor shack
   
Type of Experience (Reader):
silent aloud unknown
solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown
Type of Experience (Listener):
solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown

Reader/Listener/Reading Group:

Reader:Walter D'Arcy Cresswell
Age Adult (18-100+)
Gender Male
Date of Birth 22 Jan 1896
Socio-economic group: Professional / academic / merchant / farmer
Occupation: Poet
Religion: n/a
Country of origin: New Zealand
Country of experience: New Zealand
Listeners present if any:
(e.g. family, servants, friends, workmates)
n/a
Additional comments: n/a

 

Text Being Read:

Author: Dorothy Wellesley
Title: Hogarth Living Poets
Genre: Essays / Criticism, Poetry, Biography
Form of Text: Print: Book
Publication details: London, 1931, Hogarth Press
Provenance: owned

 

Source Information:

Record ID: 26042  
Source - Print  
  Author: Walter D'Arcy Cresswell
  Editor: Helen Shaw
  Title: Dear Lady Ginger an exchange of letters between lady Ottoline Morrell and D'Arcy Cresswell together with Ottoline Morrell's essay on Katherine Mansfield
  Place of Publication: London
  Date of Publication: 1984
  Vol: n/a
  Page: 59-62
  Additional comments: n/a

Citation: Walter D'Arcy Cresswell, Helen Shaw (ed.), Dear Lady Ginger an exchange of letters between lady Ottoline Morrell and D'Arcy Cresswell together with Ottoline Morrell's essay on Katherine Mansfield (London, 1984), p. 59-62, http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/reading/recorddetails2.php?id=26042, accessed: 28 March 2024

Additional comments:

D'Arcy Cresswell had been a frequent guest at Ottoline Morrell's 'Thursdays' hence his reference to memories of London where, amongst others, he had met DH Lawrence. No longer able to afford to remain in England, he had returned to his native New Zealand and was at this time living in the home of his parents. He kept up a regular correspondence with Ottoline until her death and she frequently sent him books and journals including in particular,works of literature and poetry. This is an extract from a long letter in which D'Arcy Cresswell continues to consider Lawrence's letters and ends with a lyrical description of his garden in the moonlight. ( Perhaps inspired by Romeo and Juliet?).

 

 

Reading Experience Database version 2.0.  Page updated: 27th Apr 2016  3:15pm (GMT)