#hester gatty

[dressedwonderfully]

Kate Phillips as Hester Gatty in Benediction (2021)

[rumyodin]

[cherubina]

Siegfried Sassoon about his wife and Stephen Tennant be like

[thefoxhuntingman]

Hester Sassoon (née Gatty) & Stephen Tennant

[thefoxhuntingman]

We* are feeling very sad about the poor 'Aircraftsman'**, but there seems a faint hope that he may recover. This morning I received a letter from the Observer asking me to write a 'personal appreciation' ('in the unfortunate event of the accident proving fatal'). How does one do that sort of writing, I wonder.

from Siegfried Sassoon's letter to Max Beerbohm dated 17 May 1935

* he and his wife, Hester ** T.E. Lawrence, fatally injured in a motorcycle accident on 13 May 1935 (he died on 19 May)

[thefoxhuntingman]

(photos from Jean Moorcroft Wilson’s Siegfried Sassoon)

“One of the first visitors of the new house was T.E. Lawrence. Writing to Geoffrey Keynes he said he had made ‘a raid on Heytesbury. All visitors there intrude, as yet, I think. He and she are like children alone in the world. S.S. is abnormally happy. He looks so well, too. Whether it will last I cannot say. The barometer cannot always stand so high.’“

(from John Stuart Robert’s Siegfried Sassoon)

[saisonciel]

Hester Gatty by F.J. Arnott, c. 1920

[saisonciel]

Hester Gatty by Rita Martin, c. 1923