WHITE (TERENCE HANBURY, 1906-1964, novelist) CORRECTED TYPESCRIPT OF AN EXTRACT FROM HIS DIARY, VIRTUALLY A SHORT STORY, AND THREE AUTOGRAPH LETTERS SIGNED, TO SIEGFRIED SASSOON AND HIS WIFE, the typescript entitled 'Letter from a Goose Shooter', with autograph revisions on every page and a photograph of White with dead geese is discussed in the letter to Sassoon himself dated 1942 ('...it was about something which seemed very important at the time. So I got 3 copies typed out of my diary, and one is for you...'); the other letters to Hester [Sassoon's wife] contain an amusing imaginary conversation in direct speech between Siegfried and Hester Sassoon, on receipt of a recent letter from T.H. White which Sassoon is supposed to have thrown into the coffee pot; he also expresses regret that he cannot still 'command the eye of childhood' ('...and see the nursery fire playing on the ceiling as I go to sleep...Bars is the main thing about childhood (bars to fire, bars to cot, bars to window, bars at top of stairs) and consequently light is very important, as it is always on the other side of them. It makes them and their shadows...'); describes the success he had at shooting that day; gives a good account, partly in imaginary direct speech, of local carol singers in Holbeach St. Mark's where he was staying; sends a book really for George Sassoon but inscribed to Siegfried 'because it was grander' and instructs Hester how to make it an even rarer copy; reports on a visit to Sydney Cockerell, who persuaded him to buy a Roxburghe Club reproduction of a thirteenth-century bestiary [mentioned by him in his diary] and who has started a collection of White's books ('...had me writing out the main facts of my life before the bat squeaked thrice...'), the typescript 16 pages, quarto, brown paper wrappers, creased and blank area of first three leaves slightly chewed by rodents, photograph pasted on the upper cover, stapled, 7 pages, small quarto and octavo, Stowe Ridings, Buckinghamshire, The New Inn, Holbeach St. Mark's, Lincolnshire, and Heaton's Hotel, Belmullet, 1938-1942

Publication of 'Letter from a Goose Shooter' has not been traced.

In her biography of T.H. White, Sylvia Townsend Warner notes that White stayed at the New Inn, Holbeach St. Mark's, in 1938. He began his unfinished book 'Grief for the Grey Geese' while there, a passage of which and a diary entry of the time are quoted by Sylvia Townsend Warner.

In a letter to L.J. Potts White described Sassoon as '...a fine fellow...a sort of Borzoi. They are beautiful, aloof, melancholy dogs, but not "loveable"...Slightly selfish, slightly touchy, slightly possessive, slightly inaccessible - apart from this, yes, he is "a saint like person"...' (Letters to a Friend, 1984)

£850