Her house, Penns in the Rocks, Tunbridge Wells, where Dorothy
Wellesley died last week, was exactly suited to her poetry. It was at the end of a long, winding woodland drive, a brick Queen Anne house in a misty hollow, surrounded by one of those strange outcrops of grey rock which one finds in that part. There was a temple at the end of a vista. There were bracken and beautifully tended flower gardens and over every- thing a waiting silence and a sense of remoteness such as could surely nowhere else be found so near London. I shall never forget visiting this brave and remarkable woman and hearing her read her poems to the sound of a harpsichord in the upstairs room where she spent the last months of her life. It was an experience that caught one into another dimension and I am glad to think that she was well enough, only a few months ago, to have her voice recorded at Penns in that room to Mr. Raymond Barnett's harpsichord accompaniment. Her last book of collected poems, Early Light, sells well, as it deserves to do.
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