Dorothy Richardson : Online Exhibition

32. Queen’s Terrace. N.W.8.
Aug. 8th

Dear Kot,

Nearly a week since your letter arrived, & not a word written, or telephoned in reply. But it has been the kind of week which turns me into an automatum. Items, beyond all the usual daily household affairs: one-fourth of a book to translate (since for the whole I have only a month) page-proofs of a friend’s book to read according to promise, & Alan, with his turn of flu plus temperature, to look after. In a day or two, as soon as I am finally free of

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page proofs, we are going to stay for a week with friends in Essex, (who will allow me to work upstairs all day, appearing only for meals and evenings) so I fear I shall not this year have the pleasure of taking tea with you in your Cresset & talking quietly & seriously.

But really my Pilgrimage business is very simple: The rights are available for any reputable publisher who will :
1) pay Duckworth, (a) £57.19.3, which is the amount of my mortgage still not paid off (b) £242 -, for stock, plates & moulds.
2) issue a definitive, corrected edition, unlimited, of Pilgrimage in

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four volumes, beginning either at once or almost immediately after the publication of the new volume, now half written.
3) pay £30 advance royalties on the new volume.

(Have you, by the way, given up the idea of publishing Kastein?)
Short of this, I must struggle along as I am. But I shall always feel grateful to you for having tried to pull me out of a blind alley.

Notes

• ‘Automatum’ is a spelling error for automaton.
• Dorothy Richardson was translating Robert de Traz’s Les Heures de Silence. Her translation would be published by G. Bell in November 1934 as Silent Hours.
• The Odles were going to stay with Peggy Kirkaldy at Mell Cottage, Tollesbury, Essex.