Abstract: Together with his son Philip Graves, the author is locating and acquiring images of letters written by Robert Graves. The texts of these are transcribed and uploaded to Robert Graves Letters: Online Database of Robert Graves Letters (html//robertgravesletters.com), thereby building a major academic resource of some 10,000 letters.

Keywords: biography, Federico de la Iglesia, correspondence, war, novels

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Among the transcribed letters from Graves there are thirty-five to Colonel Federico de la Iglesia, previously of the Spanish Republican Army, and to his wife Laura. They extend from December 1941 until Federico’s death from cancer in 1958. They cover both Robert’s wartime descriptions of his life in Galmpton, South Devon, England, from 1940 to 1946. After the end of the Second World War, from 1946 to late 1957, letters describing Robert’s life and his prose writings were mostly sent from his house in Deià, Mallorca.

Col. Federico de la Iglesia

De la Iglesia was born in 1903 into a military family. The son of a senior staff officer, at sixteen he entered the Spanish Infantry Academy as a cadet in 1917. At eighteen as second lieutenant he was posted to an Infantry Regiment serving in Ceuta (North Africa) and there he participated in the Spanish Moroccan campaign. After which he entered the Higher School of War for staff officers.

During his staff officer training, De la Iglesia again participated in operations in Africa. He completed courses in ballooning and photogrammetry and became proficient in Arabic. At Madrid University he studied astronomy and geodesy and Muslim Law. Soon promoted to captain, De la Iglesia joined the General Staff, where he focused on geodesy and topography. He undertook many projects and published two essential works on military map reading.

In July 1936, at the outbreak of General Franco’s uprising and the Spanish Civil War, De la Iglesia was now a major in the General Staff in the Republican Army; he later became Chief of Staff of the 4th Division, Fifth Army Corps of the Army of the Levant.

In December 1937, under General Modesto, De la Iglesia helped plan the battle for the re-capture of Teruel. The resulting battle became a highly significant Republican victory, and foiled Franco’s initial attempt to reach Madrid. For this De la Iglesia was promoted to colonel.

The Republican army was finally defeated by Franco’s Nationalists in March 1939. On the day the Civil War was lost, and to avoid De la Iglesia’s imprisonment or worse, his Commanding Officer, General Menendez, had him driven to Gandia, to a British owned orange exporting port south of Valencia. There the British ship Galatea was waiting, full of the members of the defeated army. De la Iglesia was the last person to board before it sailed to England.

In England, a fellow ex-republican officer invited De la Iglesia to his wedding. The groom was to marry a relative of Dorothy Elmhirst, the owner of Dartington Hall School and Estate, in South Devon. Federico made such a good impression on the Elmhirsts that they invited him to re-train and join their staff as a geography teacher.

Robert’s Departure from Spain in 1936

Three years before, in August 1936, at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, Robert Graves and Laura Riding had been forced to abandon their house in Mallorca. Desperate to return, Graves and Riding had spent time in England, then a short period in Lugano, Switzerland, for income-tax reasons from his successful I, Claudius.[1] Then in July 1938, again avoiding the tax man, they moved with their researcher, young Alan Hodge and his wife Beryl, to Brittany. Finally in May 1939, they all sailed to the United States, where they had been invited stay by Laura Riding’s admirer, Schuyler Jackson, and his family. This resulted in Laura going off with Schuyler, whom she finally married. Robert returned to England in September 1939, just as the Second World War was declared. Franco’s Spain was still closed so he stayed in Great Bardsfield with his friend the painter John Aldridge. Robert was later joined by Beryl Hodge.

Galmpton and Dartington Hall

In 1940 Robert and Beryl moved to Galmpton, South Devon, some 10 miles from the Dartington Hall Estate. Robert knew the Elmhirsts through Captain Basil Liddell Hart, who then was living on the Dartington premises, and with whom he had collaborated on their tandem books Letters to T. E. Lawrence.[2] Robert was soon introduced to Colonel Federico De la Iglesia.

Robert’s Letters to Federico

Robert and Federico both had military backgrounds and Spain in common. Initially Robert visited Federico at Dartington Hall often, but as World War II progressed this became difficult, and from 1941, they mostly corresponded by letter. There are sixteen letters from Robert written from Galmpton. Robert’s envelopes are always addressed to ‘Colonel Federico de la Iglesia’. In 1946, after the war, Robert returned to his house in Deià, Mallorca, now under Franco’s dictatorship, and some twenty letters to Federico followed. These cover Robert’s life in Deià, his work, and his trips to England. They give a brief but good account of Robert’s second marriage and his prolific literary output undertaken to support children and grandchildren. Since Federico only learned English when he became a refugee, mentions of Robert’s poetry are notably absent in the letters

The complete text of Robert’s letters to Federico are available online under ‘De la Iglesia’, at Robert Graves Letters.

The first letter, dated 1941, indicates that their friendship had begun several months earlier when Federico’s English was probably not good enough for letters. His wife Laura (not to be confused with Laura Riding) and their elder daughter, Marielena, joined him from Spain in mid-1940. Their second daughter Laurita was born later in 1943.

29 December [1941] THE VALE HOUSE, GALMPTON, NEAR BRIXHAM, S. DEVON

My dear Federico:

We are so pleased with your card, as we have a strong sentiment of neighbourliness for Laura and yourself, though we never seem to meet these days.

Is there any chance of your all coming to see us one day, these holidays? If you cared to stay the night, that would be very nice. Our little William** would love your little girl. We find it difficult to get away, because we have so much work always and also a friend*, who is lame, whom we cannot very well leave alone.

We hear from Basil Liddell Hart fairly often, and hope he’ll be down here in a few weeks.

Your Spanish poem was charming – I wish I could write Spanish verse. I have been working for a year on a book about English prose, and am now beginning a book about the poet John Milton and his first wife. Briefly, he was a left-wing university intellectual who turned unpleasantly Fascist and went through the usual andanzas in our Civil War, which ended with an attempt at rule by regional major-generals and then a restoration of constitutional monarchy!

We wish you all joy!

Yours ever

Robert Graves

(* refers to Phoebe Poole who helped Robert with typing. ** to the present author, born July 1940.)

The following letter is written when he heard of my half-brother David’s probable (later confirmed) death with the Royal Welch Fusiliers in Burmah. Federico, as a soldier, would understand his feelings.

1 July 1943, THE VALE HOUSE, GALMPTON, NEAR BRIXHAM, S. DEVON

My dear Federico

[. . .]

Beryl is expecting her baby in about a fortnight’s time. She is keeping well but can’t get about much.

I attach a cutting about my son David – I have just heard from his general that this account is quoted from a recommendation for a D.S.O. but he is not eligible for it because ‘believed killed’. The V.C. can be awarded posthumously but not an order; the D.S.O is the highest military order a regimental officer can win. Of course, it doesn’t really matter, but shows how much he was appreciated. In my day not a single temporary officer in the regular battalion was ever recommended by the colonel for a Military Cross.

I have just finished the Golden Fleece and sent it off to the publishers, all except the maps.[3]

Love to you all

From Robert

I suppose you are terribly busy with School and your degree?

(The degree to which Robert refers was an external degree in Geography, London University.)

22 August 1943, THE VALE HOUSE, GALMPTON, NEAR BRIXHAM, S. DEVON

My dear Federico and Laura,

How are you all? Federico, have you passed your examination?

[. . . ]

Lucia is well on the way to health now since she and Beryl came out of hospital. She is a tall, strong girl and (so far) very little trouble.

[…]

I hope you like The Reader Over Your Shoulder.[4] I have now finished my instructions to my map-maker about the Golden Fleece maps; it was an awful job, as you can guess.

[. . .]

Our love to you both and to the children.

Robert

To digress: these two last letters of 1943 contradict the date in the ‘Postscript 1960’ to the 1961 edition of The White Goddess:

In 1944 […] I was working against time on a historical novel about the Argonauts, when a sudden overwhelming obsession interrupted me.[…] I stopped marking, across my big Admiralty chart of the Black Sea, the course taken […] by the Argo, from the Bosphorus to Baku and back. Instead, I began speculating on a mysterious ‘Battle of the Trees’, fought in prehistoric Britain.[…] Three weeks later I had written a seventy-thousand-word book called the Roebuck in the Thicket.[5]

However, the previous two letters show that his Roebuck in the Thicket, although published in three parts in Poetry Wales in 1944–1945, was written in July–August 1943, and not ‘in 1944’, as quoted in the Postscript. Indeed, the letter of 22 August 1943 shows he had already written the 70,000-word draft of the Roebuck book and had sorted ‘the outgoing and return ports of call of the Argonauts’, the maps of which were reproduced on the inside covers of his The Golden Fleece.

By of December 10, 1943, as quoted in the following letter, Robert was well into the research for his historical novel, King Jesus.[6]

10 December 1943, THE VALE HOUSE, GALMPTON, NEAR BRIXHAM, S. DEVON

My dear Federico and Laura,

[…]

I am very busy on a new work: I think quite original. It is an assessing of the claims made by Jesus and by his disciples as to his divine kingship: but on historic not mystical lines. That is: what did it mean in Palestine in AD 26 to say that one was ‘Son of God’ and ‘King of the Jews’? Curiously enough, there is only one logical answer (which nobody has yet given) and which unlocks all the most obstinate locks of early Christian doctrine. It is a most romantic chain of circumstances, but borne out by Jewish Rabbinical as well as Christian sources. I guarantee to convert the most iron-souled sceptic to the general veracity of the Gospels — even of the most fantastic episodes! Though not the Christians, I’m afraid.

Yours ever

Robert and Beryl

Indeed, in Robert’s letters to friends, he often comments on his research for his historical novels. It was his way of getting feedback on his theories, as in the following letter on the origins of Christianity.

23 January 1944, THE VALE HOUSE, GALMPTON, NEAR BRIXHAM, S. DEVON

My dear Laura and Federico:

We have been very busy; just keeping the house and children going in wartime, in the country, in winter, is a 24 hour day job. We have also had a lot of friends staying, and everyone but myself has had colds, so somehow I never came round to thanking you for your Christmas presents. However, we sent Alan and Peggy to you, so that was something.

[...]

Since we last met I have been taking notes in vast quantities about the origins of Christianity — who Jesus was by parentage and lineage, and what particular divine functions he claimed. The results are most startling, even sensational, and I am surprised how close the Catholic Church has kept, in its mythology and symbols, to what seems to be the historic truth. Also, I am relieved that everyone […] comes very well out of the story. […]

Love to yourselves and the children. […] If the play-pen isn’t still in use, or disposed of, is there any chance of your sending it here by rail — Churston Station?

Yours ever, Robert

My brother Juan was born 22 December 1944. Robert sent Federico the card he had printed in Brixham with the poem ‘To Juan at the Winter Solstice’.

May 8, 1945, was Victory Europe (VE) Day, the end of the European part of Second World War. Two days later Federico gave a talk on the BBC.

10 May 1945, THE VALE HOUSE, GALMPTON, NEAR BRIXHAM, S. DEVON.

Dear Federico:

This is just to say how much we enjoyed your talk. We all listened to it, and it came over very clearly and persuasively — let’s hope it is the first of many! How do you like the taste of victory?

Love from us all,

Robert

In May 1946, Robert was preparing his return to Mallorca, to the house he had built with Laura Riding and which was registered in her name; nevertheless, he had paid for it and other assets initially with his royalties from Good-Bye to All That and then with those from his Claudius books.[7] Riding had remained in America, had by now married Schuyler Jackson, and had given up any claim to the property.

4 May 1946, [Galmpton]

My dear Federico — and Laura

Yes, it was a very happy visit you paid us. You have been real friends to us all these years and we will always be grateful for that. Our address will be: —

DEYÀ,

Mallorca,

Baleares,

Spain

Love from us all, Robert

Robert and the family left Galmpton for London shortly after sending the above letter. They stayed at Brown’s Hotel (off Piccadilly) for ten days to say goodbye to family and friends. On 16 May 1946 they left from Croydon airport in an air taxi, an ex-RAF Dragon Rapide, landing at Rennes to overnight with friends from Deià. They then landed at Toulouse in search for fuel for the plane, which meant another overnight. Finally, they landed on the 18th of May at Barcelona to get permission to fly over to Palma in Mallorca, which was classed as a war-zone. That same day they reached Deià. Robert wrote the letter to Laura and Federico some ten days after his return.

[c. 28 May 1946] DEYÀ, MALLORCA, SPAIN

Dearest Laura and Federico:

We arrived safely after a most interesting journey from the geographical point of view — how clearly one sees the advantages and evils of the French agricultural system from the air! — and were lucky to arrive at all because we had to telephone to Madrid from Barcelona (which took a long time) before we got permission to fly in a private plane to what, we learn, constitutes a war-zone. Everyone was exceptionally polite and kind to us both at Barcelona and at the Palma Airport and our arrival in the village was a triumphal entry. It has been greeted as a sign of the coming return of normal times; the island longs for its tourists.

This has been a very queer experience, returning to the house! I left in such a hurry ten years ago and finding it almost unchanged, with a drawer full of clean shirts and another full of trousers and so many things I had so long forgotten I possessed. A few old people are dead but the rest are most of them quite unchanged except that the beautiful children have grown up ugly and the ugly ones grown up plain. Living is very expensive indeed for anyone without our advantages of a well-stocked house and well cultivated lands. But of course, the compensation is that I do not pay super-tax or even income-tax and the rates are very low indeed.

The village is non-political but surprisingly well-informed about events: they listen in to the radio regularly and so supplement it with meagre news in the local paper. No poverty here, in the Continental sense, but life is a great struggle compared with what it was before the war and naturally the Civil Service has been greatly enlarged to enforce the new laws and regulations necessitated by so thorough a change of regime. It is wonderful how well the islanders overcome difficulties of transport and so on; there are two lorries in this village which are driven by a gas contrivance which is fired with sacks of almond shells. Life is much easier from the physical point of view and I have already started working again.

Beryl and I send love to you all

(Federico was a geographer, hence his presumed interest in the aerial view.)

Over the years, Robert wrote some twenty letters to Federico from Mallorca, often as additions to typed letters from Beryl. Here are some extracts:

3 August 1946, DEYÀ, MALLORCA, SPAIN

Dearest Federico and Laura —

[…]

The population of the village, in sharp contrast with Spain as a whole, is falling rapidly. Only 8 boys are at the village school where, when I first came here, there were 45, and a great many houses are empty or used only by summer visitors from Catalunya. The explanation given is that the cost of living is too high to have more; to which I would add the lack of any faith in religion, and confidence in progress, or any stimulating event or occasion. There are no feuds, quarrels, competitions, scandals, love affairs. And there have been poor harvests and this year’s olive crop is very moderate.

This seems the dead-calm not unhappy centre of a maelstrom of European unhappiness. The local papers carry nothing but religious or foreign news.

I have written quite a lot since I came here, including a story in a Mallorcan setting.

Much love from us all to you all,

Robert

We live at about £50 a month, with a cook and a nurse-girl.

(Following the salutation is a long discussion and lists of the pros and cons of living on the island just after the war, here omitted. The ‘story’ Robert refers to concerns The Feud of St Peter and St Paul / Está En Su Casa.)

The next letter is dated some seven months later.

C. 1 April 1947, DEYÀ, MALLORCA, SPAIN

[…]

No, Federico, this is not Spain; but a very special island, and it is the completely negative qualities of the villager’s minds that make their company so restful or so boring, whichever you like to think it. No heroism, no smells, no dirt, no Christianity, not even stupidity!

Robert

That autumn of 1947, Robert’s pre-war secretary, Karl Goldschmidt, returned to Deià. He had been in the village in the 1930s and had worked as Robert and Laura’s secretary until the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in August 1936. Indeed, Karl travelled with them to England, and there continued working for them. After Robert’s breakup with Laura and his return to England, Karl typed solely for Robert when in Galmpton. Once back in Deià, he arranged for Karl, now with British nationality (but his name changed to Kenneth and his surname to Gay) to return to the island so Robert could get seriously back to writing. Karl lived in Robert’s second house next door and worked full time for him. Robert and the family continued calling him Karl.

2 January 1948, DEYÀ, MALLORCA, SPAIN

Dear Federico and Laura:

[…]

No, we don’t find the Spanish climate too severe; but we have been lucky this year in meeting people, to whom we can talk intelligently — mostly foreigners. I sent 4 books off in 1947 for publication — Collected Poems, Collected Essays on Poetry, The Golden Ass (translation), and The White Goddess.[8] Now I’m beginning a collaboration with a German called Kübler, about Isabel de Barreto and her famous voyage 1595-99 from America to the Philippines and back: a historical novel. I must rub up my geography and buy lots of reference books. The main source is Pedro de Quiros, her pilot.

[…]

Yours ever affectionately,

Robert and Beryl

Beginning in1948 Robert made an annual trip to England with Beryl and the children to see family, friends, literary agents and publishers. Robert was an avid letter writer and he generally answered all the letters the same day he received them. When he returned from a trip there was always a great pile of unopened ones waiting for him.

17 May 1948, DEYÀ, MALLORCA, SPAIN

Dearest Federico and Laura:

If all goes well will be coming to England by air on June 29–30th via Madrid.

[…]

Will be in England until Aug 2nd, when we fly back: mostly in London, but a week towards the end of July in Lowestoft. We want to see you all, and I have to spend two days or so in your district because my mother is having treatment (for cancer) at Torquay; I’d like to show her the three children, whom she hasn’t seen and may not see again. She’s 90 years old.

Much love from us all

Robert

Many letters to Federico now cover Robert’s prose, and also problems with my siblings and me, and our schooling.

10 February 1949, DEYÀ MALLORCA, SPAIN

Dear Federico:

I have just finished my novel about Isabel de Barreto. It’s called ‘The Isles of Unwisdom’. […] The Castilians come best out of the story though; though they tend to be cruel, they are good soldiers and not treacherous like the Galicians who are the villains of the piece. Also I’ve read proofs of my Utopian novel, Seven Days in New Crete, and my collected essays on poetry The Common Asphodel, and my translation of the Golden Ass. Now for a bit of a rest!

[…]

Robert

C. 20 December 1949, DEYÁ, MALLORCA, SPAIN

Dear Federico y Laura:

I’m overworked these days — it’s my own fault for getting interested in so many different subjects. At the moment I’m working with a Talmudic scholar on a revised view of the Gospels; I got a great part of it right in King Jesus but not all, and this is a study documented to the nth degree. It’s full of surprises for me. The early Christians invented almost nothing — they merely re-arranged and altered; so that the entire story is there in a muddled form if one can logically re-assemble it, as Joshua Podro and I are doing now. One has to know the reasons for the distortion and the rest is quite easy if one has ready access to the relevant texts — as I now have.

Robert and Beryl

Robert is referring to his The Nazarene Gospel Restored published almost four years later.[9]

By 1950, Robert was becoming concerned about my education and arranged for me to have a tutor, the American poet W. S. Merwin. His tutoring was not a success, and I only suffered him for a year. For a few weeks I shared him with Stephen Hawking whose mother had been at St Anne’s College, Oxford with Beryl.

12 December 1950, DEYÁ, MALLORCA, SPAIN

Dearest Federico and Laura:

[…]

The olive-harvest was all got in without any wetting, so the oil will be wonderful.

Now suddenly there’s snow on the hills and I got my brazier going. I am still working on the Gospel Book after 17 months, and I will finish it in 20 — I can’t afford to make any gross errors and the subject is extremely complicated and never before seriously studied.

We have a young Princeton writer here with his wife; he’s William’s tutor. His methods of teaching are unconventional, but that’s all right. William has to get early Tudor poems by heart and read difficult text books on the U.S. constitution; but seems interested.

I have a book of poems coming out in the Spring and when I finish the present, I have to start work on a text book of Greek mythology to take the taste of the Talmud out of my mouth

[…]

It was nice finding Marielena so grown up suddenly.

Robert and Beryl

In 1951, in order to send my siblings and me to better schools, Robert rented a couple of flats in Palma, one above the other. We lived in the larger lower flat. Robert set up his study in the smaller upper flat, which was shared by with my new tutor, Martin Seymour Smith and his future wife, Janet de Glanville, and where I was taught and prepared for my English Common Entrance exam.

27 October 1952, Deyá Mallorca

Dearest Laura and Federico:

[. . .]

What do we do for stimulation in this dead island? We don’t while away our time in drink and adultery, like many foreigners here. Visitors come from England and the States to tell us what is really happening in the world, and hotly discuss Stevenson and Eisenhower. But on the whole we are so dreadfully dull that mushrooms are growing out of our noses and ears and our hair is full of ancient dust.

Picture Post have asked me to do them 3 articles on the Nativity this Christmas: at a huge fee. All right, I will, and I don’t care if it sinks them. But it will interrupt my dictionary of Greek Mythology work which continues (by contrast with Majorca) to be of absorbing interest.

Much love to you all,

Robert

In January 1953, Tomás, my brother and Robert’s eighth child, was born.

I passed my Common Entrance exam, and in autumn 1954 was sent to a boarding school in England, which put an extra strain on Robert’s finances. That year Robert gave the Clarke Lectures at Cambridge.

30 October 1954, 108 Clifton Hill, London N.W.8,

Dearest Federico and Laura —

This has been an impossible visit. Have had to give six lectures at Cambridge, and 3 broadcasts (one yet to come) and three talks and visit the sick, and buy clothes, and prepare lectures, and show the children London and visit relatives. A great disappointment. Never in bed before 12.30, either, and we go back on Thursday early, and still have a mound of shopping to do and I have to do some disk recording of my poems for an American firm.

The lectures were a great success. It’s a tradition that the Clark Lectures are unattended after the first one, but I have a sort of bet with myself that I would keep the room full – and by the end, the undergraduates were still sitting on the gangway steps – I think there must have been 500–600. All done with jokes and gags and gimmicks.

Love from us both,

Robert

January 1955 Guillermo Massot 73-pral. 2.^a , Palma de Mallorca, SPAIN

Dearest Federico and Laura:

All’s much the same: I write too many books — have 8 coming out this year, of different sorts. Now I’m quietly translating two Latin classics – Lucan’s Civil Wars and Suetonius’s Twelve Caesars; and writing for Punch now and then.[10]

[…]

I quite see that for Spaniards there no place like England; but for the English there’s no place like Spain (or Majorca) if one can occasionally escape.

[ . . .]

Love to you both and the girls.

Robert and Beryl

14 December 1955, Guillermo Massot 73-pral. 2.a, Palma de Mallorca, Spain

Dear Federico and Laura

This is to help the girls with their post-Christmas shopping: with love to them both.

What a pity we couldn’t meet in September; we had all the children with us, too much to do, no help and I got bronchitis for half our brief stay.

Me, I’m just sending off the second of two Penguin Classics translations Lucan’s Civil Wars and Suetonius’s Twelve Caesars — about 250,000 words between them. Beryl and I were delighted that our translation of Alarcon’s Niño de la Bola (first in English anywhere) has been so high up in list of the English reviews of ‘New Novels’. He wrote it about eighty years ago. We are now working on Carlos Reyles’ Embrujo de Sevilla: about bullfighting and cante hondo.

[. . .]

Love to you all

Robert and Beryl

However, even Robert’s large output of books was not covering my school fees, and Robert and Beryl could scarcely cope with having to supplement Lucia and Juan’s local education. So Robert was persuaded that a lecture tour in the United States could be the answer.

6 December 1956, Guillermo Massot 73-pral. 2.a, Palma de Mallorca, SPAIN

Dear Federico and Laura –

This is for the girls’ Christmas. Please tell us about your health, Federico – are you better? Are you back at work? We worry. . . We have had a busy year keeping solvent and well, but it’s ended better than it began – I cleared off all the work I set myself to do – five or six books – and am now free. I’m therefore writing some lectures to give in U.S.A. this Feb. I’m going for only a fortnight, but hope to make it worthwhile financially, quite apart from the general help a personal appearance in the States gives to sales. I don’t like it, but I’m going; and at Cambridge I learned not to be scared of audiences.

The Spanish schools get worse and worse; so Beryl and I are teaching Juan and Lucia at home now — except for subjects like French and Spanish which they go out for.

[…]

Tomás is very big and sturdy and intelligent and no others are on the way. William managed to get ‘O Level’ at Oundle passing in 7 subjects; so no need to worry about him for a while.

Love to you all from us all —

Robert

(I failed English Literature! A great joke with Robert.)

Robert’s lecture tour in the United States in 1957 was a success: in two weeks he earned enough to enrol and pay Lucia and Juan’s fees at the International School in Geneva. And with no need for tutoring Lucia and Juan, Robert and Beryl gave up the main Palma flat and moved back to Deià full time.

So we come to the last letter to Federico who was suffering from cancer.

8 November 1957, CANELLUÑ, DEYÀ, MALLORCA SPAIN

Dear Federico:

[…] We have settled down to our early winter, and fires, and letter writing.

Lucia and Juan are greatly enjoying life at the Ecole Internationale, Geneva. […] It is very expensive, of course, but money has been coming in unexpectedly well, so they will be there for at least another year.

[…]

Have had 5 books out this year, or is it six?; yes it is six, and two more are in the press or almost out. Have been writing film treatments and scripts for the last two months; but nothing actually fixed yet, so it’s unlucky to talk about them perhaps.

I’m talking in U.S. again this Feb. (all in aid of the children’s education) but Beryl will take Tomás to London meanwhile to stay with her 90-year-old father, who is still working as a solicitor.

[…]

Robert

This was Robert’s last letter to Federico de la Iglesia, who died in September 1958. They give a brief but good account of Robert’s life and prolific literary output to maintain children and grandchildren. Robert’s poetry is not mentioned at all in the letters since Federico only learned English when he became a refugee.

Over the following years Robert lectured in the US and in the UK, which gave him sufficient income to cover education and start-ups for his children and grandchildren, and not to have to constantly write books. Nevertheless, in 1959 he published his translation of the Iliad, The Anger of Achilles, and later, in 1964, The Hebrew Myths with Raphael Patai.[11] From 1961–1966 Robert held the post of Professor of Poetry at Oxford University. But Mallorca was always home. In 1965, with no books to be typed, he paid Karl off and got him a post at the Poetry Collection Buffalo, State University of New York, which had acquired, for a substantial sum, a large collection of Graves poetry manuscripts. These Karl helped to sort out. Without Karl, Robert concentrated mostly on his poetry which he kept writing unto his late seventies. His prose was limited to short stories, essays and children’s books which Beryl typed. And, when senility set in, the royalties from the BBC I, Claudius series with Derek Jacobi, looked after him handsomely, under Beryl’s guiding hand.[12]

William Graves is the eldest son of Robert and Bery Graves. While still a geologist, he became the literary executor of his father’s estate and has worked productively to secure his literary reputation, in the process writing Wild Olives, an autobiography (1995), and a translation into Spanish of The White Goddess (La diosa blanca) in 1984, which he substantially revised in 2014. He is the Honorary President of The Robert Graves Society and with Philip Graves, his son, he is creating an online database of extant letters by Robert Graves estimated to number approximately 10,000 individual letters, He is married to Elena Lambea.

NOTES