[22 Paradise Rd.; forwarded to c/o Mrs Leonard Elsmith, Woods Hole]
Faber & Faber [Letterhead]
TheEnglandHampshire;f8TSE's New Forest holiday;a2 Master Builder’s House,
Buckler’s Hard, Hants.
NO. 5
You expressed a wish to see my handwriting – and here it is perforce: but you know that a written letter has to be a short one: my hand is already tiring after 4 lines. Here I am alone for a week. This is a tiny place on the Beaulieu River; miles from the railway. It consists of two rows of cottages built in the 18th century, and this, of course the biggest, now the hotel: they were built for shipbuilders. It is 3 miles to Beaulieu for a pint of beer (Strong’s, which many consider even better than Flower’s) whichFaber, George Denison, 1st Baron Wittenham;a1 Faber brewed before he became a publisher, for his cousin Lord Witherham [sc. Wittenham] was the head brewer. 1 It is also 3 miles to the Solent for a bathe. So I can get plenty of exercise walking. The country is flat but pretty: no doubt you know the New Forest, asEnglandLincolnshire;g7unknown to EH;a2 you know most of England except Lincolnshire. TheCoker, Margaret Rosalys ('Margot', née Mirrlees);a5 Hawkes’, Margot Coker’s friends, keep their boat here: of course it is laid up now, but they sometimes come for weekends, and brought me with them: goodness knows how I get back. Meanwhile I enjoy a week of almost complete silence: nobody to talk to but the landlady. I sit in the garden, looking over the river, when not perambulating: and the food is excellent. I get no letters. I read a little, think a little, and write a little (pencil notes only), but not too much: and I sleep soundly. I only wish you could have a month of something equivalent: also for the matter of that, that you were here now, and that conditions permitted it – TheHale, Emilybirthdays, presents and love-tokens;w2EH knits socks for TSE;e6 socks are beautifully made & of lovely wool: but I must have given you very generous measurements – if the feet of the other pair could be one inch shorter they would fit my feet and shoes better. But I am very proud of them.
Is this not a long letter! and pretty legible.
1.GeorgeFaber, George Denison, 1st Baron Wittenham Denison Faber, 1st Baron Wittenham (1852–1931), was a Conservative Party politician. It was in fact a remote cousin, John David Beverley Faber (1854–1931), who in 1886 bought out Strong’s Brewery and grew the business: he lived at Ampfield House, Romsey, Hampshire. David Faber was a man of such energy and enterprise that by the time he died in 1931, he controlled other breweries in Hampshire and elsewhere, along with more than 500 tied public houses.
5.MargaretCoker, Margaret Rosalys ('Margot', née Mirrlees) Rosalys Mirrlees – ‘Margot’ (b. 1898) – wasCoker, Lewis Aubrey ('Bolo') married in 1920 to Lewis Aubrey Coker, OBE (1883–1953), nicknamed ‘Bolo’, a major in the Royal Field Artillery. T. S. Matthews, Great Tom: Notes towards the definition of T. S. Eliot (1974), 126: ‘The married daughter, Margot Coker, had a large country house near Bicester …’
1.GeorgeFaber, George Denison, 1st Baron Wittenham Denison Faber, 1st Baron Wittenham (1852–1931), was a Conservative Party politician. It was in fact a remote cousin, John David Beverley Faber (1854–1931), who in 1886 bought out Strong’s Brewery and grew the business: he lived at Ampfield House, Romsey, Hampshire. David Faber was a man of such energy and enterprise that by the time he died in 1931, he controlled other breweries in Hampshire and elsewhere, along with more than 500 tied public houses.